The entire Medicine Lodge Indian Peace Treaty weekend centers around the signing of that historical document. Kansas' own Medicine Lodge Indian Peace Treaty Pageant commemorates the great Peace Council of 1867 between the U.S. government and the proud civilization of the Plains Indians. Generation after generation of locals put on this huge production every three to five years as they did last weekend.
The pageant features flashback to earlier times with the innocence of the Spirit of the Prairie and the Age of Discovery with explorers and lots of action waking up the virgin prairie. The Indians lived on the land and then settlers and pioneers came in search of a new life. So did the cowboys with cattle drives. The once peaceful prairie was in total chaos.
"At the end of the Civil War the western movement began in earnest. The Plains Indians found themselves pushed farther and farther from their hunting grounds. The excessive slaughter of the buffalo and the encroachment of settlers caused the Indians to react with a wave of violence that shocked the nation.
The white man, himself, was guilty of atrocities directed at the Indian. The plains experienced warfare from the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri River. In 1867 Congress formed a peace commission to meet with the five tribes of the Plains Indians – the Kiowas, the Apaches, the Comanches, the Arapahoes and the Cheyennes. The meeting took place at the site of the Kiowa Medicine Lodge, an immense structure erected by the Indians and used by them as a council house."