How One Cow Started A War

© Andreas Krappweis

Hey everyone! Jennifer Uhlarik here. As I was researching recently, I stumbled across a rather interesting tidbit of information that I didn’t know. Were you aware that a single cow was one of the catalysts that sparked the First Sioux War?

One lonely cow!

It happened in August, 1854, near Fort Laramie, Nebraska Territory (present day Goshen County, Wyoming). A group of Mormon emigrants was traveling over the Oregon Trail when one of their cows wandered away. The bovine ended up in a large encampment of Lakota Sioux with roughly 4800 men, women, and children. There, a visiting Miniconjou warrior named High Forehead shot and killed the cow.

Mormon wagon train leaving
Council Bluffs, IA

The owner of the cow tracked it down but became fearful when he saw the encampment full of Sioux, so he went to Fort Laramie instead. He explained the situation to Lt. Hugh Fleming. Fleming, in turn, approached the Sioux chief, Conquering Bear, to discuss the situation. Conquering Bear attempted to negotiate, offering a horse from his own herd or a cow from the tribe’s herd, but the Mormon man demanded $25 cash. When they couldn’t come to terms, Fleming demanded the arrest of High Forehead, but Conquering Bear again wouldn’t agree since he had no authority over the Miniconjou tribe. They ended their negotiations in stalemate.



Second Lieutenant John Grattan, a fresh graduate of West Point, took matters into his own hands. He had little respect for the Sioux as warriors and went in search of a fight, so he took an armed detachment of thirty soldiers and one interpreter and marched into the Sioux encampment to arrest High Forehead. The interpreter, who was drunk at the time, began to taunt the Sioux warriors, calling them women and promising they would be killed by the soldiers. Grattan went to High Forehead’s tent and demanded that he surrender, to which High Forehead refused. Then, Grattan went to Conquering Bear to again negotiate. The chief once more offered a horse in exchange for the dead cow, but Grattan rejected the offer. He demanded the arrest of High Forehead. Again, the negotiations ended in stalemate. It was as Grattan walked back to his horse that the shooting began.

Red Cloud

The Sioux warriors had gradually flanked the soldiers during the negotiations, and one man became so nervous he fired his gun. The bullet struck the Sioux chief, mortally wounding him. With bows and arrows, the Sioux killed Grattan and eleven of his soldiers. The remaining men retreated to a rocky outcropping nearby, but a group of Sioux led by the rising war chief Red Cloud pursued and killed them all.

For days after the battle, the Sioux wreaked havoc on the nearby settlers, trading posts, and Fort Laramie. After three days, the Indians abandoned the large encampment and returned to their respective hunting grounds, going against the provisions of the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. When a burial party went into the encampment, they found the bodies of the thirty soldiers had been mutilated almost beyond recognition.

© Phil Konstantin

When news of the battle that became known as the Grattan Massacre reached the War Department, a plan for retaliation was formed. They sent Colonel William S. Harney to Fort Kearny with the intent to garner revenge. The Indian agent in the area forewarned the Sioux of the coming battle, and half the Sioux forces went to Fort Laramie and presented themselves as friendly. The other half under Chief Little Thunder’s leadership, remained at large, although they desired also to live peacefully.

On the morning of September 3, 1855, a 700-soldier force of descended on an encampment of 250 Brulé Sioux. Harney and his men killed more than one hundred men, women, and children that day, and also took roughly seventy prisoners. The Battle of Ash Creek, as it became known, began a long history of attacks and retaliations that would continue for many years on the Western frontier. In fact, The Battle of Ash Creek can be directly linked to one of the most famous cases of retaliation in all of Indian war history. One of the young boys who witnessed the massacre of family and friends at Ash Creek grew to be known as the great Sioux warrior, Crazy Horse, who twenty-one years later, rode into battle against Custer on the banks of the Little Big Horn.

It's your turn. How do you think the situation with the runaway cow should have been handled? Could war have been prevented?

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen, when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has won five writing competitions and made the top 10 and top 3 in two other competitions. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers and lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, teenaged son, and five fur children.

The Making—and Controversy—of the Crazy Horse Memorial

 

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Last month, I shared about the creation of Mount Rushmore. This month, I wanted to share another Western monument that sits only seventeen miles southwest of Mount Rushmore. Do you know the one I mean? It’s the Crazy Horse memorial.

 

WHO WAS CRAZY HORSE?

 

Crazy Horse was a Lakota Sioux leader who was born somewhere between 1840 and 1845, though common thought is it was around 1840 or ’41. He was the son of a Lakota medicine man and a Miniconjou woman. His mother passed away when he was a small child. In 1854, during his early teens, Crazy Horse witnessed the Grattan Massacre, where an Indian stole and ate a cow from one of the Oregon Trail wagon trains, and when thirty soldiers, led by Lt. John Grattan, marched in to retrieve the animal, gunfire broke out and all but one of the soldiers was killed. This sparked quite a war on the Plains and set Crazy Horse on a path to become a great warrior. 

 

After the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, where the U.S. Army slaughtered a sleeping camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children, the Lakota and other tribes aligned with the Cheyenne to make war on the white man. Crazy Horse distinguished himself in battle over and over and participated in many of the biggest conflicts in the Plains Indian wars, including the Battle of the Little Big Horn (aka Custer’s Last Stand). But eventually, the tide turned against the Lakota and other Plains Indians, and Crazy Horse ended up surrendering in September of 1877. When an interpreter wrongly interpreted something Crazy Horse said, the general he was supposed to meet with was told he intended to kill the general during the proceedings. Crazy Horse was arrested, and as he struggled to free himself and flee, he was stabbed with a bayonet and died soon after.

 

Crazy Horse was known to be very caring toward his people, always helping the poor or elderly. He poured his life out to benefit his people, and he is remembered in history because of it.

 

THE MONUMENT

Crazy Horse Monument
(c) RJA1988
https://pixabay.com/users/rja1988-5385704/

 

Like Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse memorial is a statue carved into the side of a mountain in South Dakota’s Black Hills. The sculpting of Thunderbird Mountain (now known as Crazy Horse Mountain) began in 1948 when Oglala Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear unsuccessfully requested a Native American face be included in Mount Rushmore. Since his request was never answered, he took it upon himself to hire Polish sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to begin work on a mountainside statue dedicated solely to a Native American hero. In his letter to the sculptor, Chief Standing Bear wrote, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too.” Ziolkowski agreed to the project, and the Department of the Interior gave the necessary permitting to begin work.

 

Unlike Mount Rushmore, the sculpture is still in progress and probably will be for many years to come. Chief Standing Bear chose not to receive any money from the government for the project, so it is completely funded by private donations from wealthy citizens and from the visitor’s center. Work began on Crazy Horse’s face in 1948, but it took until June 3^rdof 1998—a whopping fifty years—to complete that portion. 

 

1/34 Scale Model of the Crazy Horse Memorial.
(c) Mark Bellingham on Flickr
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode.en

When completed, the entire sculpture will show Crazy Horse seated on his horse, pointing toward his people’s sacred lands. It is a monumental undertaking, and if it is ever completed according to its current plan, it will be the second tallest sculpture in the world, following India’s Statue of Unity. The entire carving, as proposed, will be 641 feet long by 563 feet high. Crazy Horse’s face is 87 feet, 6 inches tall. Other dimensions of the proposed statue are as follows:

 

Outstretched arm—263 feet long

Pointing finger—29 feet, 6 inches long.

Horse’s head—219 feet (or 22 stories) high

Horse’s mane—62 feet high

Horse’s ears—54 feet long

Horse’s eyes—20 feet wide by 15 feet high

Horse’s feet—26 feet in diameter

 

Also included at the Crazy Horse monument are the Indian Museum of North America, the Native American Educational and Cultural Center, the Mountain Carving Gallery, and the Sculptor Home and Studio.

 

THE CONTROVERSY

 

While many see this great monument as a positive step in telling the history and culture of the Native American people, there are many who aren’t as impressed. Many, particularly among the very Native American culture this statue tries to uplift, have taken issue with dynamiting the natural rock face to create a manmade image of Crazy Horse. They would far prefer nature be left alone. It is beautiful as is.

Commemorative postage stamp
released on January 15, 1982

 

Crazy Horse Commemorative Postcard from
the stamp's release day--January 15, 1982

To make matters worse, some have pointed out that during his lifetime, Crazy Horse took great pains to avoid being photographed, as he believed that to capture his image with a camera was to trap a piece of his soul with it. So these naysayers feel that it goes against the very spirit of Crazy Horse to create such a mammoth image of him. 

 

Others have taken issue with the fact that the Crazy Horse monument and park seems to be more about the sculptor, Karczak Ziolkowski, rather than Crazy Horse himself. And still more complaints have been raised by some of Crazy Horse’s family’s descendants that the money raised by the visitor’s center and shops isn’t going into completing the sculpture, but instead, to lining individuals’ pockets. 

 

It's Your Turn: How do you feel about Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial? Are they positive additions to the fabric of American culture, or do they detract? If the latter, why do you feel that way?

 

Award-winning, best-selling novelist Jennifer Uhlarik has loved the western genre since she read her first Louis L’Amour novel. She penned her first western while earning a writing degree from University of Tampa. Jennifer lives near Tampa with her husband, son, and furbabies. www.jenniferuhlarik.com

 

 

AVAILABLE NOW

 

Love’s Fortress by Jennifer Uhlarik

 

A Friendship From the Past Brings Closure to Dani’s Fractured Family

 

When Dani Sango’s art forger father passes away, Dani inherits his home. There, she finds a book of Native American drawings, which leads her to seek museum curator Brad Osgood’s help to decipher the ledger art. Why would her father have this book? Is it another forgery?

 

Brad Osgood longs to provide his four-year-old niece, Brynn, the safe home she desperately deserves. The last thing he needs is more drama, especially from a forger’s daughter. But when the two meet “accidentally” at St. Augustine’s 350-year-old Spanish fort, he can’t refuse the intriguing woman.

 

Broken Bow is among seventy-three Plains Indians transported to Florida in 1875 for incarceration at ancient Fort Marion. Sally Jo Harris and Luke Worthing dream of serving on a foreign mission field, but when the Indians reach St. Augustine, God changes their plans. However, when Sally Jo’s friendship with Broken Bow leads to false accusations, it could cost them their lives.

 

Can Dani discover how Broken Bow and Sally Jo’s story ends and how it impacted her father’s life?

 

Landmarks of the Oregon Trail

On November 1, my very first published novella collection—The Oregon Trail Romance Collection—got a second print run. So I’m revisiting my research on the Oregon Trail for a bit, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the major landmarks on this 2,170-mile trail.

Independence, Missouri—The Starting Point

Known as the “Queen City of the Trails,” Independence was the official starting point for the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails. Within Independence, there were many blacksmiths, wheelwrights, livestock traders, and mercantiles where would-be travelers could buy all that was needed for the long journey west. According to some resources, these businesses operated around the clock since the demand was so great for travelers to lay in the stores they’d need for the arduous journey. Can you imagine the clang of hammer, the sound of saws, the belligerent arguing of livestock traders as these would-be emigrants bought, sold, and traded at all hours of the day and night? During the height of the Oregon Trail’s popularity, it must have been a rollicking place!

Courthouse & Jail Rocks

Location: near modern-day Bridgeport, Nebraska

Able to be seen for a good 50 miles before reaching them, these two large rock formations appear as one from a distance. As such, travelers sometimes called them “The Lonely Tower.” However, as they drew closer, emigrants on the trail realized they were two separate formations. Because one looked like an important government building, people called it “The Courthouse”—and the other became known as “The Jail.” Eventually, those names evolved into “Courthouse Rock” and “Jail Rock.” Sitting more than 4000 feet above sea level, they are the first sizeable rock formations travelers would come to on the trail.

Chimney Rock

Location: Four miles south of Bayard, Nebraska

This iconic rock formation has a large cone-shaped base with a 325-foot-tall spire at its top. Of the many landmarks along the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails, this one is the most mentioned in a study of over 300 diaries and journals written by emigrants. It was known by several names: Chimley Rock, Elk Peak, or Chimney Tower, but “Chimney Rock” was the one that stuck.

Fort Laramie

Location: Approximately 100 miles north of Cheyenne, Wyoming

This fort began in the 1830s as a fur trading outpost. As time went on and the beaver population thinned, the traders at the post began trading with the Sioux and other tribes for buffalo robes. In 1849, the Army offered to buy this privately-owned post in order to keep a military presence along the westward trails. With this change, it expanded from a 80’x100’ space into a major military garrison, which included stables, powder magazine, bakery, barracks for both officers and enlisted, a guardhouse, and more. Over the years, it served also served as a stage stop, a Pony Express stop, and a telegraph station.

Several military campaigns were launched from Fort Laramie during the Indian Wars. One significant Indian conflict, which I wrote about in my story, Sioux Summer (part of the Oregon Trail Romance Collection) was the Grattan Massacre. The garrison also hosted different treaty negotiations with the Indians, as well.

Travelers along the westward trails looked forward to arriving at Fort Laramie for the opportunity to restock their dwindling supplies, as well as feel a touch of civilization after some six weeks of hard travel across the lonely wilderness. 

Independence Rock

Location: Evansville, Wyoming

At 1,900 feet long, 700 feet wide, and 130 feet tall, this massive rock formation was described by emigrant J. Goldsborough Bruff like this in 1849: “reached Independence Rock . . . at a distance looks like a huge whale. It is being painted & marked every way, all over, with names, dates, initials, &c - so that it was with difficulty I could find a place to inscribe it.” 

As stated by Bruff, emigrants traveling west looked forward to reaching

Independence Rock in order to inscribe their names and messages for those coming after them—or to look for messages inscribed by family and friends who’d gone before.

Fort Bridger

Location: Fort Bridger, Wyoming

This fort was another that originally began as a fur trading post in the early 1840s. Later, it was taken over briefly by the Mormons. There was much conflict over who owned it until the government settled the argument and made it an Army garrison by 1858.

This was the location where the Oregon and California trails split from the Mormon trail. Those wanting to go to Oregon and/or California would turn northwest. Those wanting to reach the Great Salt Lake and surrounding areas continued due west.

After the experience of Fort Laramie, many expected Fort Bridger to be similar. However, Fort Bridger was a much smaller and less well-stocked outpost. Some complained that it was little more than a few barely habitable log cabins and a miserable supply of trade goods.

Hooper Springs, one of many hot springs in this area.

Soda Springs

Location: Soda Springs, Idaho

On their way west, travelers ran into a picturesque area that contained any number of natural hot springs. Of course, water was always at a premium, so they were thankful for the sight. And having hot water already prepared for washing laundry was a plus. 

Emigrant Sarah White Smith wrote of the area in mid-1838: “Traveled . . . along the bank of the bear river & are encamped at Soda Springs. This is indeed a curiosity. The water tastes like soda water, especially artificially prepared. The water is bubbling and foaming like boiling water. I drank of it. . . . We find it excellent for baking bread, no preparation of water is necessary. Take it from the fountain & the bread is as light as any prepared with yeast.”

As time went on, a whole town grew up in the area, aptly named “Soda Springs.”

Fort Hall

Location: Bannock County, Idaho

This trading post came about when Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth took a shipment of supplies west to sell to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company upon an agreement he’d made with that company the year before. However, when he arrived with the agreed-upon supplies in 1834, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was in financial difficulties and refused to take the shipment. So, Wyeth traveled some miles beyond and set up this trading post in order to sell the supplies. Wyeth was eventually driven out of business when the Hudson Bay Company set up a competitive trading post only a short distance away: Fort Boise. It remained in British hands until a treaty was signed between the United States and Britain for the Oregon Country south of the 49^th parallel.

Fort Boise

Location: Parma, Idaho

As stated above, Fort Boise was created by Hudson Bay Company in 1834 to compete with Wyeth’s Fort Hall. Because of its huge size and deep pockets, the Hudson Bay Company was able to undercut the prices quoted by Wyeth’s Fort Hall, thus driving him to sell out. Boise operated in its original location from 1834-1854, but finally shut down after severe flooding and an increase in fighting with the Native American tribes. Only a short portion of those ten years were under British rule, since the treaty transferred both Fort Hall and Fort Boise into American hands.

Whitman Mission

Location: Walla Walla, Washington

In 1836, Methodist missionaries went west to preach the Gospel to the Native American tribes. Among this group was Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, who set up the Whitman Mission. Tensions between the Whitmans and the Cayuse tribe were tense at first, but eased when Marcus proved he was interested in learning the Cayuse language. He made it clear that he wanted the Indians to learn white man’s ways as well. The ease in tensions lasted only until larger and larger numbers of white travelers made their way across the Oregon Trail from 1843-1847. Then, suspicions grew in the Cayuse hearts again, fearing the white man was coming to take over their land. When measles broke out in 1847, half the Cayuse tribe died from the unfamiliar disease. Since the whites had been more exposed to measles, fewer of them died of the disease, alarming the Cayuse. The surviving Cayuse Indians rode in, killed the Whitmans and eleven others of their party, as well as took forty-seven mission residents hostage. 

The Dalles

Location: Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

Here, the wagon train emigrants would depart the land for rafts large enough to float their wagon, team, and families on. The river was calm in places, and in other spots, it reached different degrees of rapids. As you might imagine, this was a risky proposition. So, over time, an alternate route, the Barlow Toll Road, was created. This toll road circled around Mount Hood, adding some distance to the trip but saving the more faint of heart from having to navigate the river on rafts.

Oregon City—The End of The Oregon Trail

The travelers made it! Oregon City was a town originally set up by Hudson Bay Company in 1829, and this became the mecca for Oregon Trail travelers to file land claims.

It’s Your Turn: Have you visited any of these locations? Are there any you want to see? What do you think it would have been like to be a traveler on the Oregon Trail as you reached one of these major landmarks on the journey west?

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has finaled and won in numerous writing competitions, and been on the ECPA best-seller list several times. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers, Women Writing the West, and is a lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, college-aged son, and four fur children

The Oregon Trail Romance Collection

Nine romantic adventures take readers along for a ride on the Oregon Trail where daily challenges force travelers to evaluate the things that are most precious to them—including love. Enjoy the trip through a fascinating part of history through the eyes of remarkably strong characters who stop at famous landmarks along the way. Watch as their faith is strengthened and as love is born despite unique circumstances. Discover where the journey ends for each of nine couples.