Land, Justice, and Angie Debo Telling the Truth To-And About-Your Neighbors" (2001)
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Fall 2001 Land, Justice, And Angie Debo Telling The Truth To-And About- Your Neighbors Patricia Nelson Limerick University of Colorado at Boulder, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Limerick, Patricia Nelson, "Land, Justice, And Angie Debo Telling The Truth To-And About-Your Neighbors" (2001). Great Plains Quarterly. 2209. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2209 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. LAND, JUSTICE, AND ANGIE DEBO TELLING THE TRUTH TO-AND ABOUT-YOUR NEIGHBORS PATRICIA NELSON LIMERICK When Angie Debo was an old woman, she phone calls to them. She got her network lived in her hometown of Marshall, Oklahoma, geared up to write in support of Alaskan Na where she had warm and close ties with her tive land claims, an enlargement of the neighbors. She also had a more geographically Havasupai Reservation, and groundwater dispersed network: a list of several hundred rights for the Papago or Tohono O'odham. people, scattered around the nation, whom She attended closely to events in Marshall she would mobilize to write senators and con and to events all over North America. gressmen, or to the president, on behalf of After she retired, Angie Debo did some particular campaigns for Indian rights. She sent international traveling. She went to Europe, the members of her network mimeographed Africa, and Mexico. In Africa she became letters and in urgent circumstances made friends with a woman who took care of her when she got sick; they stayed in touch for the rest of her life, and Angie Debo helped pay for the education of the children of this African woman. Debo traveled to Russia, and there is something very remarkable about the way she KEY WORDS: Angie Debo, Indian disposses had been interested in and preoccupied by sion, Native Americans, Oklahoma Russia since she was a teenager in Oklahoma. During the Vietnam War, Debo found her Patricia Nelson Limerick is Professor of History at the thoughts repeatedly turning to this tragedy; it University of Colorado, Boulder. Her publications seemed to her an extension of what she called include The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken America's "real imperialism," which had be Past of the American West (W.W. Norton & Co., gun with the conquest of Indian people and 1987) and Trails: Toward a New Western History which relied on an unfortunate trust in mili (University of Press of Kansas, 1991). tary force. Until the United States reckoned with the early history of its imperialism [GPQ 21 (Fall 2001): 261-73] usually called "westward expansion" or "the 261 262 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2001 FIG. 1. Angie Deba. Courtesy of Angie Debo Collection, Oklahoma State University Libraries, Stillwater, Oklahoma. frontier"-it would occupy a morally compro campaign to reveal the injustices done to In mised position, Debo thought, in trying to dian people, to recognize and explore their uplift the world and spread ideals of democ internal perspectives and experiences, and, racy and j ustice. 1 generally, to write honestly and realistically Angie Debo's interests then were at once about the process of displacement that put very local and very expansive, truly global. white Americans in possession of most of Her sense of the world's connectedness is one Oklahoma and the American West contains a dimension of a host of qualities that make her puzzle: while Debo is best known for this criti an inspiration. She was entirely and com cal and searching perspective on the conquest mittedly Oklahoman, and entirely and of North America, on other occasions she committedly human. Contemplating her ex wrote in quite a different vein, returning to a ample truly stirs the soul. much more familiar and conventional celebra Angie Debo's capacity to inspire is also tion of pioneer hardihood and enterprise. This marked by a zone of mystery. Her courageous is a paradox.2 LAND, JUSTICE, AND ANGIE DEBO 263 In the twenty-first century, I am less able to bling process by which Indians lost land and cruise past this paradox. While a comparison settlers gained it?-is not an easy one for any to Jekyll and Hyde would certainly overstate one to resolve. Expecting Angie Debo to have the case, there do seem to be two public-record mastered this issue, when it is one that con Angie Debos: Angie Debo #1, the justly fa tinues to stymy us, may be entirely unfair. And mous, often-reprinted, often-cited author, who it may be especially unfair when we reckon wrote critically and openly about the cruel, with her determination to live in the midst of manipulative process of dispossession that the beneficiaries of the process, of conquest, made the modern state of Oklahoma possible, or of frontier settlement, that is up for evalu and Angie Debo #2, the much less famous, ation. If Angie Debo had gotten out of much less reprinted, much less cited author, Marshall, Oklahoma, and gone to live in Bos who wrote cheerfully about pioneer courage ton or Los Angeles, would distance have and determination and who made and retained cleared her sight and freed her to write much an easy peace with the frontier history associ more critically and consistently of her one ated with Frederick Jackson Turner. Angie time neighbors? One also has to wonder if that Debo # 1 is the author of the famous books Rise kind of "clarity of sight by detachment from and Fall of the Choctaw Republic (1934), And locale" is not its own form of distortion. Dis Still the Waters Run (1940), and A History of tance in those terms might only add up to an the Indians of the United States (1970). Angie easier dismissal of the charms and virtues of Debo #2 is also the author of two books, her the pioneers' descendants. Then there is a only novel-Prairie City (1944) and Oklahoma: whole other possible line of commentary: given Foot-loose and Fancy-free (1949). the obstacles that Debo faced as a woman in Oklahoma-Foot-loose and Fancy-free? the field of history, would it not be more ap The person who revealed many of Oklahoma's propriate simply to marvel at how much she early leaders as greedy, grafting, cheating ma accomplished against the odds? nipulators of statecraft for personal gain used Let us first review Angie Debo # 1, the per that cheery, light, breezy Chamber of Com son who pulled off the gloves and asked Okla merce subtitle for a book about the state? homans to face the cruelty and conniving that It will not surprise anyone if I admit that I formed part of their heritage. Then we will have quite a strong preference for Angie Debo look at Angie Debo #2, the celebrator of # 1, and that I am at something of a loss when Turnerian virtues of frontier hardihood and it comes to figuring out what to make of Angie persistence. And then we consider various Debo #2. And it doesn't help the situation explanations for the seeming difference be that there are no known public-record state tween these two writers. ments from a sort of Angie Debo#3, who might have given us a few hints on how to reconcile DEBO'S OKLAHOMA the differences between the first two charac ters. Angie Debo was born in Kansas in 1890 One proposition that we should consider is and moved to Oklahoma as a child.3 Her par that I have overstated this contradiction; ents were, at first, farmers in Marshall, Okla afterall, it is a rare human being who lives a homa, and then the owners of a failed hardware life of pure consistency, who does not at some store. Under difficult circumstances, Debo point yield to the fact that human nature is so made her way to a master's degree in history complicated that a consistent evaluation of from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. human character would be its own distortion from the University of Oklahoma. She did of reality. Moreover, the issue-what is the teach from time to time at Texas and Okla connection between non-elite, salt-of-the homa colleges and she worked, before her re earth western settlers and the morally trou- tirement, as the curator of maps at Oklahoma 264 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2001 State College in Stillwater. Debo's biographer, volting theft, fraud. While I spent some time Shirley Leckie, points out Debo was offered ten years ago being condemned in newspapers an academic job on a few occasions, but chose for writing with too much negativity about to pursue her career as an independent scholar. the history of the American West, my own Nonetheless, as Leckie makes clear, the ob language on these topics was immeasurably stacles that kept women from finding academic more moderate than Debo's. She truly makes employment were substantial indeed, and the author of The Legacy of Conquest look like Debo's remarkable pluck, in finding grants and a Milquetoast, evading too harsh a reckoning other forms of support for her scholarship, was with the region's past. stunning. Let us take a moment to remember the pres Debo wrote her first book on the Choctaw sures that came down upon Debo to moderate Indian people.