Angie Elbertha Debo was a teacher, a curator, an author, a researcher, a lecturer, an advocate for Native Americans, and a historian. She alarmed many academics with her unorthodox ethnohistorical approach to writing historical texts. And even though she never married or held political offices, she is known as the First Lady of Oklahoma.
Early Life
Edward Peter Debo, a farmer, and Lina Elbertha Cooper married on February 19, 1889, in Beattie, Kansas (a little more than 200 miles northwest of Kansas City). They lived on a variety of rented farms in the Beattie, Kansas, area, dreamed of, and saved for a farm of their own.
They had a daughter, Angie Elbertha, on January 30, 1890. Angie’s younger brother, Edwin Forrest, was born on October 24, 1891.
In 1895, the family moved to a farm in the rural community known as Welcome in Geary County, about fifteen miles south of Manhattan.
A few years later, Angie’s father sold the family’s cattle and paid $1400 for a farm in “old” Oklahoma, a parcel of land released and patented during the “1889 land rush.”
He converted his farm wagon into the famed “prairie schooner” of Western settlement. They loaded it and a second wagon with their essential possessions and disposed of everything else.
In 1899, Angie turned nine, and the family traveled by wagon to Marshall, Oklahoma Territory. The 275-mile trip took them about a week.
Early Education
Angie and her brother walked two miles from home to attend a one-room rural school. At twelve, Angie passed a territorial exam and received her common school diploma. But there was no high school for her to attend in Marshall.
She received her teaching certificate at sixteen and taught in local rural schools and saved for college.
In 1912, Angie’s father sold the farm, bought a hardware store, and moved the family into town. It was a disastrous venture for him, but he persevered with other businesses.
Angie was one of the nine members of the class of 1913, the first graduating class of Marshall High School. She was twenty-three.
College
In 1915, she enrolled at the University of Oklahoma. There, she took classes taught by Western historian E. E. Dale, the first professor in the department to offer a course on American Indian history. She graduated in 1918 with a bachelor’s in history.
Graduate School
She taught high school for five years and saved money for graduate school. But getting into graduate school wasn’t straightforward. Women were not allowed to enter the history field. So she enrolled for a Master’s degree in International Relations at the University of Chicago. She received that degree in 1924. Her thesis was “The Historical Background of the American Policy of Isolation.” Co-authored with J. Fred Rippy, it was published in 1924.
Career
While still in Chicago, the history department received requests from thirty colleges and universities wanting to hire history teachers. But only one would consider a woman, and then only if they couldn’t get a man.
In 1924, she got a position in the history department at the West Texas Teacher’s College in Canyon, Texas. But it wasn’t a faculty position. College professors were male. Even though she had the education and had published, she taught at a high school affiliated with the college.
For the next nine years, she worked on her dissertation and taught at that high school.
She received her PhD in 1933. She published her dissertation, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic, in 1933.
In 1934, West Texas Teacher’s College let her go.
With no job, she returned to Marshall to live with her parents and write.
The Launch of Her Freelance Career
Over the next couple of years, Angie conducted research and completed a manuscript funded in part by a grant from the Social Science Research Council. She titled her work: And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes,
Until that time, historians of American Indians wrote from a non-Indian perspective based on researching government documents. Angie examined the history of the Choctaw from the perspective of the Choctaw people. She took extensive notes from archival materials and oral histories. In the book, she examines the effects of the termination of tribal governments and the forced liquidation of tribal lands among Oklahoma’s Five Tribes.
Angie signed publishing deal with the University of Oklahoma Press for And Still the Waters Run which she completed in 1936.
But her charges in the book of corruption, moral depravity, and criminal activity by many in the government were controversial. And many of those “bad actors” were still alive. Under threat of libel suits from Oklahoma businesspeople and politicians named in the manuscript, the University of Oklahoma Press withdrew as publisher. And no Oklahoma universities would hire her.
Life as a Freelancer
In 1935, her published dissertation, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic, received the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association.
That same year she taught summer school at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College, Nacogdoches, Texas.
In 1937, she took part in the WPA Indian-Pioneer History Project. She conducted some interviews for oral histories and edited some documents for this vast collection of firsthand accounts of life in the Oklahoma Territory/Indian Territory as early as the 1860s. Sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Historical Society, these stories told by Native Americans and early settlers became known as The Indian Pioneer Papers.
Funded again by the Social Science Research Council from 1937 to 1939, Angie researched and wrote The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians.
The 1940s
And Still the Waters Run was published in 1940. Angie was fifty years old.
She published The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians in 1941.
In 1942, Angie Debo was named Oklahoma’s “Outstanding Woman” by Theta Sigma Phi, the honorary professional journalism fraternity for women, Oklahoma City chapter, Alfred A. Knopf History fellow.
She published Tulsa: From Creek Town to Oil Capital in 1943.
Her father died in 1944. She published her only work of fiction that year. Prairie City: The Story of an American Community was based on the history of Marshall and nearby towns.
Also in 1944, she became licensed as a local preacher for the United Methodist Church in Marshall.
She was a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Oklahoma from 1946 to 1947.
In 1947, she began serving on the faculty of the Oklahoma A&M College Library as curator of maps. She held that position until 1955.
Funded in part by the Rockefeller Fellowship, she published Oklahoma, Foot-loose and Fancy-free in 1949. During this year she conducted a survey of social and economic conditions in full-blood settlements of the Five Tribes for the Indian Rights Association.
1950s
During the 1950s, Angie published: The Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma: Report on Social and Economic Conditions and a column entitled “This Week in Oklahoma History” for the Oklahoma City Times. She also did book reviews for The New York Times.
She edited Oliver Nelson’s The Cowman’s Southwest: Being the Reminiscences of Oliver Nelson, Freighter, Camp Cook, Cowboy, Frontiersman in Kansas, Indian Territory, Texas, and Oklahoma, 1878-1893, and she was an editor for the Oklahoma Indian Newsletter.
Her mother died in 1954.
In 1956, Angie conducted a survey of the Relocation Policy as it affected Oklahoma Indians, for the Association on American Indian Affairs. She also became a member of the board of directors for the Association on American Indian Affairs. She remained on the board until 1966.
Angie traveled to Europe, to the U.S.S.R. and to the European Seminar of the Council for Christian Social Action.
Her only teaching job during this decade was when she taught Oklahoma history at Oklahoma State University during the 1957-1958 school year.
Awards and Honors
Angie was inducted into the Oklahoma Memorial Association’s Oklahoma Hall of Fame, into Gamma Theta Upsilon, a national professional geographic fraternity, and became a member of Phi Kappa Phi honor society. She was also initiated into Delta Kappa Gamma, a national honor society for women teachers. In 1958, the town of Marshall honored her with Angie Debo Recognition Day.
The 1960s
In 1961, the Oklahoma Historical Society awarded her an honorary life membership.
She edited Horatio B. Cushman’s History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians, which was published in 1962.
In 1965, she taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Angie spent a lot of time traveling during the 60s. She went to a summer seminar in Mexico, to Canada, Africa, England, and to Alaska.
After her trip to Alaska in 1969, she lobbied for land rights of Alaska Natives until 1975.
The 1970s
In the 70s, she published A History of the Indians of the United States. And in 1976, she published Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place for which she received the Southwest Book Award for Biography from the Border Regional Library Association (El Paso, TX) and received the Wrangler Award from the Western Heritage Association of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
She served as a board member on the Board of Directors for the Oklahoma Chapter of the ACLU from 1973 to 1976.
Awards and Honors
Much of the decade saw Angie Debo receiving honors and awards. In 1971, she received the award for best nonfiction from the Oklahoma Writers Federation. Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Arizona, honored her, and she was invited to take part in the L. S. Ayers Tribute to the American Indian, Indianapolis, Indiana. In Canyon, Texas, they celebrated Angie Debo Day.
Angie received the Henry G. Bennett Distinguished Service Award from Oklahoma State University, the Pride of the Plainsmen Award from Enid, Oklahoma High School, and the Bicentennial Medal from the Oklahoma Library Association.
She also received an “Okie” certificate from the State of Oklahoma and a tribute from the Oklahoma State Federation of Women’s Clubs. The Oklahoma Writers Federation awarded her an honorary life membership. She received a Distinguished Service Award from the Oklahoma Heritage Association. Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, gave her an Honorary Doctor of Letters, and the Tulsa Chapter of Women in Communications awarded her the Newsmaker Award.
The 1980s
The 80s began with Oklahoma State University holding a reception in Angie Debo’s honor.
Shortly after that, Gloria Valencia-Weber and Glenna Matthews, Oklahoma State University faculty, started a four-year project of interviewing Angie for the university’s oral history project.
Preparing a documentary for the American Experience Series, the Institute for Research in History filmed and filmed and interviewed her between 1982 and 1986.
Awards and Honors
In 1982, the History Department, Oklahoma State University established the “Angie Debo Award for Oklahoma History” and the Payne County, Oklahoma, Historical Society gave her an honorary life membership.
During this decade, she received the Award of Merit from the Western History Association and was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Hereford, Texas. The University of Oklahoma Alumni Association gave her the Distinguished Service Citation, and the Oklahoma Governor’s Advisory Commission on the Status of Women inducted her into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation awarded her a Certificate of Recognition, and the State of Oklahoma hung her portrait in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. She was designated as an Ambassador of Goodwill by the Cherokee Nation and received the Achievement Award from the American Indian Historians Association.
In 1987, the American Historical Association gave her the Award for Scholarly Distinction. Then on January 24, 1988, Governor Henry L. Bellmon presented Angie the Award for Scholarly Distinction in a special ceremony in Marshall, Oklahoma.
Death
Angie died peacefully in her sleep on February 21, 1988, at 98. She is buried in North Cemetery, Marshall, Oklahoma.
Legacy
I violated history by telling the truth.” – Angie Debo
Angie Debo didn’t fight the system that rejected her. She wore it down until she was recognized as an influential historian dedicated to the study of Native American history and culture, particularly the Five Tribes of Oklahoma. She lobbied for Alaskan Natives and Native Americans in Arizona as well. Federal court cases recognize her work in cases regarding tribal land rights. Her papers are in the Special Collections of the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Posthumous recognition
In 1994, the Edmond Public Schools named an elementary school after her.
The Oklahoma Center for the Book awarded her the Ralph Ellison Award in 1997.
She is one of twenty-one Oklahoma writers featured on the state’s official Literary Map of Oklahoma.
Angie Debo was the subject of the PBS series The American Experience episode titled “Indians, Outlaws, and Angie Debo” in 1988.
Shirley A. Leckie published a biography, Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian, through the University of Oklahoma Press in 2000.
In his inaugural address in 2007, Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry quoted Angie Debo and called her “our state’s greatest historian.”
In 2010, a bronze statue of Angie Debo created by local artist, Phyllis Mantik, was dedicated at the Stillwater Public Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma. At her feet, on top of the statue’s base, is the state seal of Oklahoma. Replicas of the seals of Oklahoma’s 38 federally recognized Native American tribes are along the bottom of the base. Near the statue, a plaque describes Angie Debo’s life and her importance to the community, the state, and the nation.
Are there any Oklahoman’s reading this who have heard of Angie before? Anyone else hear of her?
References
Angie Debo Collection, Oklahoma State Library
“Angie Debo: A Chronological History, 1890-1988”
Digital Prairie of the Oklahoma Department of Libraries
Fembio, notable Women International
Image Credits:
Featured Image: Phyllis Mantik and Lynda Reynolds, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Second Image: OKJaguar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Final Image: Angie Debo School