Settlers led by John Hutchinson first came to Medicine Lodge five years after the signing of the 1867 Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty, and the town took its name from the lodge used by the Kiowa to celebrate the Sun Dance. The settlement quickly developed a small commercial district and post office, but in 1874, during active Native American raiding, the state militia and residents built a stockade in the center of town for protection. Its log walls stood about nine feet high, with gates on the north and south and watchtowers around the perimeter. Medicine Lodge and Sun City militia manned the fort and scouted more than 100 miles. Although the stockade was never attacked, three settlers were killed a few miles away in a raid. During the threat, about 200 people crowded into the stockade with their wagons, pets, and livestock, sheltering in stone buildings and wagons, receiving daily rations of corn for bread and bison meat, and passing time by playing cards or dancing while the saloon had no alcohol. People entered the stockade in May, but civilians gradually returned to their claims during the summer, and most had left by fall, while some abandoned the area permanently. The danger lasted only that year, and Medicine Lodge incorporated as a city in 1879. Today it is an agricultural community whose history is also reflected in the Stockade Museum, a smaller reproduction of the original stockade first opened for the 1961 Peace Treaty celebration, with exhibits including the peace pipe from the 1867 treaty, artifacts from the Peace Treaty Pageants beginning in 1927, pictures from the 1884 Medicine Lodge Bank robbery, the 1877 Smith Log Cabin, and the Old Steel Jail installed in the courthouse basement in 1886, which over its lifetime held about 20 murderers, including the man who shot the Barber County Sheriff in 1908.