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Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers on the Upper Missouri, 1854-1868. By Doreen Chaky. Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2012. 408 pp. Photographs, notes, maps, bibliography, index. $39.95.
When strong tensions exist between cultures, small incidents can have grave consequences. Thus, in August of 1854, when a Sioux Indian living near Fort Laramie, Nebraska Territory, found a lame cow and killed it to feed his family, a sad chapter began. The cow's emigrant owner complained of his loss to the fort's commander, and Lt. John Grattan was soon on his way to a Sioux encampment to demand that the thief be turned over to face justice. As a cannon rolled into place to reinforce his demand, violence broke out, and thirty soldiers, including Grattan, soon lay dead. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis viewed the event as a deliberate and unprovoked attack, and the following year ordered Brig. Gen. William Harney into the field to punish any Native Americans he could find and remind them to stay clear of white roads and settlements. On September 3, 1855, Harney attacked a camp of a few hundred Sioux hunting buffalo, killing eighty-six of them...