AUGUST 19:

August 19, 1854:  A Miniconjou Sioux named High Forehead killed a sickly cow near Fort Laramie, in southeastern Wyoming. The cow's owner complained to the fort's commander. A brash Brevet Second Lieutenant John L.Grattan, and 30 volunteers left the fort on this date to find the Sioux involved. Grattan went to Conquering Bear's Brule Sioux camp near Ash Hollow, and demanded the Indian who shot the cow. Grattan made numerous threats to the Sioux, but they would not hand over High Forehead. During the parlay, a shot rang out and Grattan's artillery gunners opened fire on the camp. Conquering Bear tried to get both sides to stop shooting, but he was hit by an artillery round. Eventually, all but one of Grattan's men were killed in the fighting.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From:  http://emayzine.com/lectures/sioux.htm

The first phase of the Sioux Wars occurred soon after the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, the primary purpose of which was to assure safe passage for whites along the Oregon Trail. It was whites, however, who broke the peace. In August 1854, a Mormon party was in transit along the North Platte River in Wyoming.

A cow belonging to one of them escaped and wandered into a Brule Teton camp along the trail. The Mormon chased after it, became frightened at the sight of the Indians, departed, and reported to the army at Fort Laramie that the cow had been stolen.   In the meantime, visiting Sioux from another band killed the cow.

The incident escalated.

Although the Indians offered to make restitution for more than the cow was worth, Lieutenant John L. Grattan, fresh from West Point, insisted on the arrest of High Forehead, the man who had killed the cow.   Grattan led a force of 30 infantrymen and two cannons to the Brule village to carry out his intention.  When High Forehead refused to turn himself in, Grattan gave the order to fire.

Chief Conquering Bear, the spokesman for all the Sioux, was mortally wounded in the first howitzer volley.  Enraged, the Indians launched a counter-attack in which they wiped out the detachment.

Alarmed whites dubbed the incident the Grattan Massacre and, in response, carried out a much more brutal act of their own.   On September 3, 1855, 600 troops out of Fort Kearny in Nebraska, under General William S. Harney, swarmed over a Brule village at Blue Water, killing 85 of the scattering Sioux, and taking 70 women and children captive.   Then Harney led his men on a march through Sioux country to demonstrate the army's strength to other Sioux bands.

None rose up against the army for the time being. But they would remember the death of Conquering Bear and the attack at Blue Water.

One young Oglala Teton who had been in the camp the night Conquering Bear received his fatal blow would especially remember.   His name was Crazy Horse and, in a vision soon after the incident, he would discover his purpose and destiny as a war chief in battles to come.

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From:  http://www.nps.gov/fola/facts.htm

Brevet 2nd Lieutenant John L. Grattan - Impetuous young officer of the Sixth U.S. Infantry. On August 19, 1854, Grattan was put in command of a detachment of 29 enlisted men and an interpreter and was sent to arrest a Miniconjou Indian for supposedly stealing and killing an emigrant's cow in a Brule Indian camp eight miles east of Fort Laramie. It is unknown exactly what transpired at the Indian village, which may have contained as many as 4,000 people. Fighting broke out, claiming the life of Chief Conquering Bear, Grattan, the 29 enlisted men, and the interpreter. Most historians acknowledge this to be the first major battle of the Northern Plains Indian Wars.
 

From http://www.mormontrail.net/TRAIL97/WESTNEB/01jun2jc.html
 

On August 19, 1854, while General Harney was sailing the high seas of the Atlantic on his way to reunion with his family, the incident occurred that was directly responsible for his greatly curtailed vacation. In far-off Nebraska Territory, 30 soldiers and their interpreter were killed in a ridiculous, uncalled-for skirmish with Brule Sioux tribesmen. The so-called "Grattan Massacre," which caused a great deal of subsequent controversy and became the first link in a bad chain of events, started over a cow.

During the late summer, about 4,000 Brule and Oglala Sioux had camped near Fort Laramie to receive their annual distribution of goods provided under the terms of an early treaty. On August 17, a cow belonging to a Mormon traveling the nearby Mormon-Oregon Trail strayed into the Brules' camp and was killed by a visiting Miniconjou Sioux. The animal's owner reported the incident to authorities at Fort Laramie and demanded that the responsible Indian be punished.

Brevet 2nd Lt. John L. Grattan, fresh out of West Point, was ordered to bring in the guilty party. The brash officer had once made the comment that he could subdue all of the Indians on the Great Plains with only 30 men. Now, two days after the cow killing and accompanied by an inebriated interpreter, 29 troops and two 12-pounder howitzers, he rode into the Brules' camp looking for trouble.

As Fort Laramie's commanding officer later declared, "There is no doubt that Lt. Grattan left this post with a desire to have a fight with the Indians, and that he had determined to take the man at all hazards."

After making a complete fool out of himself in front of his own men as well as the Brules' chief, Conquering Bear, Grattan insisted on taking the guilty Indian prisoner. Even when Conquering Bear tried to defuse the explosive situation by offering several horses in return for the dead cow, Grattan persisted with his harangue.

When negotiations failed, Conquering Bear turned to walk away. A soldier immediately shot him. Both sides then opened fire, and within moments all of the men of the Army detachment lay dead or dying before the Brules' camp. When news of the Grattan Massacre reached the War Department, plans were immediately formulated to punish the Sioux. Harney was recalled from Paris and ordered to Fort Kearny, where he assembled a command consisting of elements of his own 2nd Dragoons, as well as units from the 6th and 10th Infantry and the 4th Artillery Regiments. On August 24, 1855, one year and one week after the now-famous cow was killed at Fort Laramie, Harney and his men rode forth from Fort Kearny to discipline the Sioux.

On September 3, at Ash Hollow on Blue Water Creek, Harney's 600 soldiers came eye to eye with 250 Sioux men, women, and children under the leadership of Little Thunder, who had succeeded Conquering Bear as the chief of the Brules. Harney, who only days earlier had declared, "By God, I'm for battle---no peace," ordered his men to open fire. When all the smoke cleared, 85 Brules had been killed. Because some of the resisting Indians had taken refuge in the rocky outcrops that lined Blue Water Creek, firing on the part of the soldiers was indiscriminate, and consequently they killed several women and children.

After the battle, the Army made a wide sweep of the Sioux country, but encountered no further resistance. For his merciless handling of the battle at Ash Hollow, Harney was forever afterwards known among the Sioux as "the Butcher."