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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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MEDICINE LODGE PEACE TREATY SITE
Kansas
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Location: Barber County, in the area just south
and east of the town of Medicine Lodge.
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In October 1867 U.S. peace commissioners concluded
treaties with the southern Plains tribes at this site that represent
milestones in Government. Indian relations. The treaties did not bring
peace, but they are significant as the first such documents aimed at
remaking the Plains Indians in the white man's image and absorbing them
into American society rather than merely removing them from areas of
settlement. Thus the treaties signaled a new era in Indian-white
conflictnot only a struggle for land but also a struggle for
cultural identity.
After the Civil War, when emigration surged and
railroads pushed westward, the clash with the Indians intensified.
Congressmen soon tired of destructive, costly, and indecisive military
campaignssuch as that of General Hancock in Kansas in the spring
of 1867. Also influenced by the agitation of humanitarians and Indian
Bureau officials, Congress decided to seek a peaceful solution. In July
1867 it created a special Peace Commission to negotiate with the Plains
tribes. Consisting of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, three other
prominent civilians, and three Army generals, it was charged with
erasing the causes of war, insuring the security of frontier settlements
and railroad construction, and inaugurating a program to "civilize" the
Indians.
The commission originally planned to conclude a
treaty with the northern Plains tribes at Fort Laramie, Wyo., before
meeting with the southern Plains groups. In August the members held
friendly but inconclusive councils with the Indians on a trip by
steamboat up the Missouri River from Omaha, where they proceeded from
St. Louis. En route by rail to Fort Laramie, they held a conference with
the Sioux Chief Spotted Tail and others at North Platte, Nebr., and
learned that the militant Sioux were not ready to confer. Postponing the
Fort Laramie council until November, they proceeded to Fort Larned,
Kans., to meet with the southern Plains tribes. Because the Southern
Cheyennes refused to come near the string of posts on the Arkansas
River, however, the commissioners agreed to negotiate with the Indians
70 miles south of the Arkansas near a sacred Indian site not far from a
small natural basin where Medicine Lodge and Elm Creeks merged.
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Jack Howland's sketch of a
council with Kiowas and Comanches that preceded the Medicine Lodge
Treaty. Harper's Weekly (November 16, 1867). (Library of
Congress) |
The commission party, which arrived on October 19,
presented an impressive spectacle. It consisted of a 2-mile-long caravan
of nearly 100 wagons bearing supplies and gifts for the Indians.
Accompanying it were State officials, Indian agents, newspaper
reporters, adventurers and an escort of 500 troops of the 7th Cavalry.
Along both sides of Medicine Lodge Creek, thousands of Arapahos, Kiowas,
Kiowa-Apaches and Comanches were camped. With the Southern Cheyennes,
who had not yet arrived, the total number was about 5,000. Negotiations
took place beneath a specially constructed brush arbor 20 feet high in a
clearing prepared for the occasion.
On October 21 the Kiowas and Comanches signed one
treaty and the Kiowa-Apaches another. The Southern Cheyennes appeared on
October 27, and the following day they and the Arapahos concluded a
treaty. The three peace treaties were generally similar to one another
and to those subsequently signed at Fort Laramie. The tribes agreed to
move onto reservations set aside in Indian Territory, partly on lands
the U.S. Government had forced the Five Civilized Tribes to relinquish
because of their support of the Confederacy. The Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache,
and Comanche reservation was to be located between the Red and Washita
Rivers in southwestern Indian Territory; the Arapaho-Cheyenne
reservation, to the northeast between the Cimarron and Arkansas south of
the Kansas border. In 1869 these reservations were formally created, the
Darlington Agency and Fort Reno supervising the Cheyenne-Arapaho
Reservation and the Fort Sill Agency and Fort Sill controlling the
Kiowa-Comanche Reservation.
The United States promised to provide the
reservations, where the Indians would pursue farming, with educational,
medical, and agricultural facilities as well as food and other
annuities; and to grant hunting rights to the five tribes for an
indefinite period in the area south of the Arkansas River. The Indians
promised not to attack settlers or oppose railroad and military
construction. They also relinquished claims to all lands outside the
reservations.
Immediately after completing the Medicine Lodge
treaties, the commissioners proceeded to Fort Laramie, where they
arrived on November 9, 1867. But the last of the northern Plains tribes
did not sign treaties until the following November. Neither of these
groups of treaties brought more than temporary peace. On the southern
Plains, war broke out before a year had passed, and General Sheridan
responded in his punitive winter campaign of 1868-69.
The treaties were signed in the area south and east
of the modern town of Medicine Lodge. This tract, in public and private
ownership, includes the swampy and heavily wooded confluence of Medicine
Lodge and Elm Creeks. A dirt road, branching off South Main Street and
paralleling Elm Creek, approaches within about 50 yards of the
confluence of the creeks. The Indian camps were along both banks of
Medicine Lodge Creek. Cultivated farmlands today line its northern
side.
East of the town of Medicine Lodge is a 400-acre
Memorial Peace Park, a natural amphitheater owned by the Medicine Lodge
Peace Treaty Association that overlooks the Indian campgrounds and
treaty-signing site. Since 1927, at 5-year intervals, Medicine Lodge
citizens have presented at this park a pageant depicting the treaty
signing and later settlement. The Centennial Pageant, in 1967, featured
1,200 participants, including several hundred descendants of the Plains
Indians who had gathered there a century before. The northern part of
the park is a city golf course.
NHL Designation: 08/04/69
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/siteb9.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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