11/17/2025
November is National Native American Heritage Month. Every Monday this month, Congressional Cemetery will be highlighting lesser-visited Native American graves and the lives they commemorate.
Chief Scarlet Crow (Kan-Yu-Tu-Duta, or Kangiduta) was a chief of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate band of the Sioux nation. In February 1867 at the age of 42, Scarlet Crow joined the Sioux delegation to Washington to negotiate terms for securing the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate’s residency on their own lands. An initial agreement was reached on February 19th, but negotiations reopened on the 19th.
The proposed revisions included the removal of multiple articles favorable to the Sioux and the addition of a term that would allow the U.S. government to make land appropriations and payments "in [their] own discretion[.]" Scarlet Crow protested to President Andrew Johnson that the signers of the treaty were not "chiefs," which caused the president to leave the meeting.
On February 24, 1867, amid the renegotiations, Scarlet Crow vanished without warning from his lodgings. A $100 reward for his return was offered by the Indian Bureau. His body was reported found over two weeks later in Arlington, Virginia, two miles from the barracks. He had been hanged from a tree with the green blanket he had last been seen wearing. Although ultimately ruled a su***de, the circumstances of Scarlet Crow’s death insinuated foul play. The branches he had been tied to bent under his weight, and the blanket’s knots were not done in the style used by his tribe, among other indications. It was suspected by his tribesmen, as well as Indian Agent Joseph Brown, that he had been kidnapped and murdered, his body strung up to make it look self-inflicted.
Scarlet Crow's signature (an X) is found on the initial treaty. The amended document lacks his signature. It instead reads "DEAD" next to his name.
Scarlet Crow left behind a wife and children. His son, Sam, petitioned Congress in 1912 to mark Scarlet Crow’s grave at Congressional Cemetery. His descendants still visit and mourn the injustice of his suspicious death.
