The Massacre
With cannon trained on the Indian encampment, the fragile peace was about to shatter. Lt. Grattan ordered Conquering Bear to surrender the Miniconjou Lakota warrior and Conquering Bear refused. The negotiations went on for quite some time, during which the translator, Auguste, repeatedly mistranslated. Auguste also was quite intoxicated by the time the negotiations began, and although Grattan had scolded him before the meeting, he failed to take charge of him and return him to the fort.
Trader James Bordeau, who owned a nearby trading post, was in the encampment at the time, and later relayed the most reliable accounts of what transpired. Bordeau stated that Auguste had taunted the Sioux warriors, calling them women, and was openly boasting that the soldiers would kill them all. Evidently seeing that their situation was not good, and that negotiations were going poorly, Lt. Grattan concluded the precedings. However, before he reached his column, a shot rang out, fired by a nervous trooper. Conquering Bear had been shot in the back as he walked away, and another shot had been fired by another trooper, hitting another Indian nearby, wounding him. Angered by the shooting, the Lakota rose up and counterattacked the troopers and with the aid of warriors like Spotted Tail, the Lakota quickly killed the entire detachment. Lt. Grattan was one of the first killed. However, some 18 troopers broke away for a group of rocks nearby. However, they were cut off by warriors led by Red Cloud, then an up and coming war leader, and all the troopers were annihilated.
Out of respect, the Brulé took the dying Conquering Bear out into the vast prairie, far away from white people, to die with dignity. It was there on his prairie that they buried him, laying to rest a leader, warrior, and peacemaker. The incident would spark a response from the US Army, who ignored the fact that Lt. Grattan had instigated the affair. This event would greatly influence the First Sioux War.
Read more about this topic: Conquering Bear
Famous quotes containing the word massacre:
“The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)