As a reinforcement of white power, government negotiator and Indian agent Thomas Fitzpatrick escorted a delegation of 11 Indian leaders to Washington, D.C., at the conclusion of the treaty agreement. One new Indian leader was so disturbed by the trip that he supposedly committed suicide on the way. President Millard Fillmore presented medals and flags to the chiefs at a White House ceremony, but the U.S. Senate was already reneging on the treaty. Although it upped the amount of the annual annuity to $70,000, Congress slashed the annuity period down to 10 or 15 years, depending on what the president wished to do at the end of the decade.

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When the delegation returned to the West in 1852, Fitzpatrick brought with him only $30,000 worth of goods to be distributed as the annuity. The following year, he resubmitted the modified treaty to some of the tribes that had signed the original agreement. Few accepted the alterations without the ‘usual inducement’ of bribery, or possibly threats. Some never consented to the changes. Not that it mattered. The peace ended less than three years after the initial treaty signing.

On August 19, 1854, a group of Brulé Sioux assembled eight miles east of Fort Laramie near a trading post owned by James Bordeaux, who had, for a time, run Fort John for the American Fur Company. While waiting for the distribution of the annuities, the warriors killed and roasted a cow that had strayed or been lame (depending on the historical account) and had been left behind by a Mormon wagon train headed for Salt Lake City in present-day Utah. When the wagon train reached the fort, its leader, Hans Peter Olsen, complained about the loss. That same day, Brulé Chief Martoh-Ioway (Bear-That-Scatters) arrived at the fort and reported the incident, offering to hand over the offender so that his band would receive its annuities on schedule as per the treaty.

Lieutenant Hugh B. Fleming, then in charge, sent 2nd Lt. John L. Grattan and 29 men of the 6th Infantry, and Lucien Auguste, an interpreter, to receive the supposed cow thief and bring him into the fort for punishment. A recent graduate of West Point, the brash young Grattan marched into the Indian camp with two 12-pound cannons. Accounts differ as to what happened next, but it seems that Auguste was intoxicated and, having had some animals stolen, held a grudge against Indians. In villages the troops passed through on the way to the Brulé camp, Auguste dared the Indians to try to annihilate the whites, announcing that he was coming with ‘thirty men and a cannon,’ and that this time he would ‘eat their hearts raw.’

When Grattan’s detachment reached the camp, things quickly fell apart, and someone, either a soldier, Auguste or a warrior, fired a shot. Then the cannons blazed. When the fight ended, Grattan, Auguste and all the soldiers lay dead, along with an unknown number of Indians. The battle not only became what Fort Laramie lead park interpreter Rex Allen Norman labeled ‘the first skirmish of the Indian Wars’ but also made an indelible impression on at least one teenage Lakota witness — Crazy Horse.

Four years later, David A. Burr passed the Grattan battle site on his way west. He wrote the following entry in his diary dated June 27, 1858: ‘At 11 o’clock we reached & nooned at Bordeana [Bordeaux] Trading post distant 10 miles from [Fort] Laramie — This is the largest trading post I have seen, It is a real fort — as there is a square enclosed on two sides by the houses & the other are by a strong palisade….It was at this post that the Grattan massacre took place. We saw the grave where the 29 men who were killed are buried — Near here we saw an Indian burying ground. They place their dead on a scaffold elevated some 10 or 12 ft above the ground — with their head to the East.’

With only a small garrison stationed at Fort Laramie in 1854, the Indians could have pressed their advantage after the Grattan incident and overrun the place. They chose to remain more or less peaceful for the time being. That, however, did not stop the military from mounting punitive expeditions from Fort Kearny and Fort Leavenworth via Fort Laramie the following year.

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