The particular medicine
lodge, mystery house or sacred tabernacle from which the Medicine Lodge River
received its name was in reality an arbor-like shelter of tree trunks and leafy
branches which was erected by the Kiowa people for the celebration of their
annual sun dance in the summer of 1866. It was located in the valley of the
Medicine Lodge River, several miles below the present town of Medicine Lodge,
which is at the mouth of Elm Creek. In their own language, the Kiowa people
called this stream A-ya-dalda P’a, meaning "Timber-hill River." The Kiowa had
considered the site sacred due to the high content of Epsom salts in
the river.
The Medicine Lodge Treaty was a set
of three treaties signed between the United States of America and the Kiowa,
Comanche, Plains Apache, Southern Cheyenne, and Southern Arapaho in October
1867. The site of the Peace Council camp was about three miles above that of
the future town and on the same side of the river. A Peace Treaty Pageant,
first presented in 1927 in an outdoor amphitheater on a quarter section of
Kansas prairie, commemorates this significant event in Western history.
Settlers led by a man named John Hutchinson
founded the town of Medicine Lodge north of the confluence of Elm Creek and
the Medicine Lodge River in February 1873. The community grew
rapidly with a hotel, stores, and a post office established within a
year.
In 1874, in response to Native raids
in the region, residents and the state militia constructed a stockade. A
group of Osage killed three settlers within a few miles of the
compound, but no direct attack on the fortifications occurred. Medicine
Lodge was incorporated as a city in 1879.
Temperance activist Carrie Nation launched
her crusade against the sale of alcohol while living in Medicine Lodge in 1900. Her
home and a reproduction of the 1873 stockade are open to the public