Post by blackcrowheart on Oct 3, 2007 13:16:40 GMT -5
Our Daily Frybread
Angie Debo Uncovered Truth About Indian Land Run
JoKay Dowell - Cherokee Phoenix
Jun 2, 2007
Debo uncovered truth about Indian land run
Angie Debo holds a map in the Map Room of the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University. (Photo courtesy of OSU Special Collections and University Archives Library) By JoKay Dowell
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Angie Debo arrived to the Indian Territory plains near what is now Marshall, Okla., at the age of 9 in a covered wagon 10 years after the land run of 1889. Before her life ended, she became Oklahoma’s most controversial historian and had her career threatened when she wrote the book “And Still the Waters Run,” which details the immoral tactics politicians and powerbrokers used to cheat Native Americans out of their lands.
“I told the story and named names. That’s what a historian is supposed to do,” Debo said in a documentary about her life. The film was shown by Dr. Patricia Loughlin, assistant professor of history at the University of Central Oklahoma, at the 35th Symposium on the American Indian held in April at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah.
Debo, a mere wisp of a woman at 5-feet, 2-inches and 110 pounds, said when she began her research she didn’t realize there was a criminal conspiracy in northeast Oklahoma to cheat Indian people out of the lands that were assigned them during the allotment period.
“But when I got into it, I couldn’t back out. Indians owned all the land in Oklahoma,” she said in the film “Outlaws, Indians and Angie Debo.”
As a child, Debo loved reading books as well as writing. All she knew of Indians came from books. So when she arrived in Indian Territory she was hoping to see some Indians.
“All I saw was homesteaders,” she said in the film.
Debo obtained her teacher’s certificate at age 16 and taught in rural schools close to Marshall. Waiting for Marshall to build a high school, she graduated at the age of 23, one of nine members of Marshall’s first graduating class. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Oklahoma in 1918 and then obtained a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago because the history field was still closed to women at that time.
In 1933, Debo received a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma and in 1934 the OU Press published her dissertation “The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic,” which won the Dunning Prize by the American Historical Association. The prize encouraged Debo to pursue research and freelance writing.
She returned to Marshall and signed a book contract with the OU Press to pursue the history of the American Indian. Debo said in the film that she felt that a full history of America could not be given without information about American Indians.
In 1936, Debo wrote “And Still the Waters Run.” Because the manuscript gave an unappealing view of prominent Oklahoma citizens and government leaders in the legalized theft of Indian lands, the OU Press refused to publish the book.
“And Still the Waters Run” was eventually published by Princeton University Press in 1940, when she was 50. Unable to obtain university employment, Debo taught in rural Oklahoma schools. She eventually worked as the Maps Librarian at Oklahoma State University.
As she had done since she was a child, Debo continued to write in her spare time. She wrote a total of nine books, edited several others and wrote articles for Harper’s Magazine. Her last book, “Geronimo,” was finished when she was 85.
Debo eventually became a leading scholar of Indian history, and her work has been cited as evidence in federal court cases involving Indian land rights. Oklahoma eventually honored Debo’s achievements when she was in her 90s, and her portrait by artist Charles Banks Wilson was hung in the state Capitol next to many of the state’s leaders she had exposed in her most famous book.
“She called it her public hanging,” Tulsa-based writer Connie Cronley, who had a 15-year friendship with the historian, said of Debo.
In 1993, Debo was inaugurated to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame. The one quality that saw her through a long life was drive, Debo said. When she died in 1988, flags at the state Capitol flew at half-staff, finally acknowledging Debo as the state treasure that she was, Cronley said.
Angie Debo Uncovered Truth About Indian Land Run
JoKay Dowell - Cherokee Phoenix
Jun 2, 2007
Debo uncovered truth about Indian land run
Angie Debo holds a map in the Map Room of the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University. (Photo courtesy of OSU Special Collections and University Archives Library) By JoKay Dowell
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Angie Debo arrived to the Indian Territory plains near what is now Marshall, Okla., at the age of 9 in a covered wagon 10 years after the land run of 1889. Before her life ended, she became Oklahoma’s most controversial historian and had her career threatened when she wrote the book “And Still the Waters Run,” which details the immoral tactics politicians and powerbrokers used to cheat Native Americans out of their lands.
“I told the story and named names. That’s what a historian is supposed to do,” Debo said in a documentary about her life. The film was shown by Dr. Patricia Loughlin, assistant professor of history at the University of Central Oklahoma, at the 35th Symposium on the American Indian held in April at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah.
Debo, a mere wisp of a woman at 5-feet, 2-inches and 110 pounds, said when she began her research she didn’t realize there was a criminal conspiracy in northeast Oklahoma to cheat Indian people out of the lands that were assigned them during the allotment period.
“But when I got into it, I couldn’t back out. Indians owned all the land in Oklahoma,” she said in the film “Outlaws, Indians and Angie Debo.”
As a child, Debo loved reading books as well as writing. All she knew of Indians came from books. So when she arrived in Indian Territory she was hoping to see some Indians.
“All I saw was homesteaders,” she said in the film.
Debo obtained her teacher’s certificate at age 16 and taught in rural schools close to Marshall. Waiting for Marshall to build a high school, she graduated at the age of 23, one of nine members of Marshall’s first graduating class. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Oklahoma in 1918 and then obtained a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago because the history field was still closed to women at that time.
In 1933, Debo received a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma and in 1934 the OU Press published her dissertation “The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic,” which won the Dunning Prize by the American Historical Association. The prize encouraged Debo to pursue research and freelance writing.
She returned to Marshall and signed a book contract with the OU Press to pursue the history of the American Indian. Debo said in the film that she felt that a full history of America could not be given without information about American Indians.
In 1936, Debo wrote “And Still the Waters Run.” Because the manuscript gave an unappealing view of prominent Oklahoma citizens and government leaders in the legalized theft of Indian lands, the OU Press refused to publish the book.
“And Still the Waters Run” was eventually published by Princeton University Press in 1940, when she was 50. Unable to obtain university employment, Debo taught in rural Oklahoma schools. She eventually worked as the Maps Librarian at Oklahoma State University.
As she had done since she was a child, Debo continued to write in her spare time. She wrote a total of nine books, edited several others and wrote articles for Harper’s Magazine. Her last book, “Geronimo,” was finished when she was 85.
Debo eventually became a leading scholar of Indian history, and her work has been cited as evidence in federal court cases involving Indian land rights. Oklahoma eventually honored Debo’s achievements when she was in her 90s, and her portrait by artist Charles Banks Wilson was hung in the state Capitol next to many of the state’s leaders she had exposed in her most famous book.
“She called it her public hanging,” Tulsa-based writer Connie Cronley, who had a 15-year friendship with the historian, said of Debo.
In 1993, Debo was inaugurated to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame. The one quality that saw her through a long life was drive, Debo said. When she died in 1988, flags at the state Capitol flew at half-staff, finally acknowledging Debo as the state treasure that she was, Cronley said.