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Documentary, American Experience - S01E03 - Indians, Outlaws, and Angie Debo (October 18, 1988)
A profile of historian Angie Debo and her exposure of the governmental conspiracy to steal mineral-rich lands from their tribal owners.
#AmericanExperience #Documentary
A profile of historian Angie Debo and her exposure of the governmental conspiracy to steal mineral-rich lands from their tribal owners.
#AmericanExperience #Documentary
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00:00I didn't know that all of eastern Oklahoma was dominated by a criminal conspiracy to
00:10cheat the Indians out of their property. And when I got into it, I couldn't honestly back out.
00:16Tonight on the American Experience, Indians, Outlaws, and Angie DeBeau.
00:30THE END
01:00Major funding for this series is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
01:28and by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
01:34Corporate funding for the American Experience is provided by Aetna, Insurance and Financial Services,
01:41for more than 130 years, a part of the American Experience.
01:46Hello, I'm David McCullough. Our story tonight is about one American's battle to tell the truth, and a reminder that heroes come in all shapes and sizes and turn up in the least likely places. They can even be historians.
02:02At the heart of historical research is the drive to know what really happened. Curiosity leads to discovery, and discovery often calls for setting the record straight. It can be like working on a detective case, as nearly everybody knows who's ever gone poking about in old record books and diaries.
02:20Angie DeBeau of Marshall, Oklahoma stands alone as someone whose persistent digging and discoveries both changed her life and the way we see a whole chapter in the settlement of the West. For years, she labored on unrecognized, unrewarded, perhaps even at the risk of her own life.
02:38Individual courage in the face of injustice is an old, honorable American theme. This is what our film, Indians, Outlaws, and Angie DeBeau is all about.
03:00Indians owned all the land of Oklahoma.
03:04They were told that they would own this land and govern it, as long as the waters run.
03:21But the entire area was dominated by a criminal conspiracy to take the land away from the Indian owners.
03:34It had been covered up all those years, and I wasn't going to cover it up again.
03:41So I told it, and I named names.
03:46Now that's what I think historians should do.
04:04I was born on January the 30th, 1890.
04:22It was just a year after Indian Territory was open for white settlement.
04:28The very date of my birth is the date of my birth is the date of the closing of the frontier.
04:35This is a little diary that I started when I was a child.
04:37And, uh, this happens to be, oh, a typical entry, April 5th, 1898.
04:49We went with Papa to burn off the long grass in the pasture, and we picked bunches of grass for him to set fire with.
04:56And I got very tired, and I got very tired, and Edwin said, girls were always delicate things.
05:03Angie Debo.
05:04I always signed those entries, every one I signed.
05:06I always signed those entries, every one I signed.
05:10Well, really I don't like having to do that.
05:11I'm, I weigh a hundred and fifty pounds.
05:18Well really I don't like having to do that.
05:22I weigh a hundred and fifty pounds.
05:25A hundred and fifty pounds.
05:31I looks like a dog and a right whale.
05:37Oh, it's a two and a right whale.
05:38We have come to honor Angie Debo, noted historian and esteemed author.
05:47Throughout her life, she has sought the truth and written it.
05:54She has portrayed the nobility and the plight of the Indians.
06:00The rapid and humble beginnings of white settlement.
06:04The courage and faith of the pioneers, the oil boom.
06:08And here with us this afternoon, we have our beautiful queen of the Prairie City days, Dr. Angie Debo.
06:15I have written the worst things about Oklahoma than anybody that ever touched a typewriter.
06:22But nobody seems to hold it against me.
06:27But there once was an attempt to keep Angie Debo from publishing the truth about the history of Oklahoma.
06:38That history began with the opening of the last frontier, the Oklahoma land run.
06:47It was the stuff Hollywood movies and novels would be made of.
06:51And it was the legend Debo would challenge over 70 years.
06:55The western half of the Indian Territory was open for a white settlement on the 22nd of April, 1889.
07:07At noon, the signal came.
07:09Any United States citizen over 21 years old was entitled to grab 160 acres, practically free.
07:25The whole area swarmed with homesteaders, railroad builders, and founders of new towns.
07:39There just wasn't any limit to their expectations.
07:44Enormous expectations.
07:46The area that was open for settlement in 1889 is where we are sitting right now.
08:00Now, my parents had not gone through this experience.
08:04We came 10 years later.
08:07I was 9 years old.
08:09I rode in the covered wagon beside my mother and my younger brother while my father went ahead with the farm machinery.
08:20And I hoped I'd see some Indians and I was very disappointed because I didn't.
08:26All I saw was homesteaders.
08:28It took quite a bit to make a raw piece of land support a family.
08:50The hot winds killed the corn.
08:53That was their starving time.
08:55Crop failure, land hunger, and adventure swept settlers across the continent in the 19th century.
09:06By the time the homesteaders arrived in Oklahoma Territory,
09:10Indian Territory was the largest piece of land in America, still owned by Indian nations.
09:20They were known as the Five Civilized Tribes.
09:23To distinguish them from the Plains Indians, who were hunters.
09:27And they owned and governed this rich land communally.
09:32But now, they were completely surrounded by white settlement.
09:36And time was running out.
09:38I didn't know about the Five Civilized Tribes because Indian Territory was farther away
09:48from the experience of the homesteaders in this area than any part of the world is now.
09:55All I knew about the Indians was what I read when I was in public school.
10:07It would be years before Angie Dubow learned of the struggle of the Five Tribes to hold on to their land.
10:12Like most American children, her studies focused on white progress.
10:17When I was ready to enter high school, there weren't any high schools.
10:26And there just wasn't anything I could do except mark time on the farm.
10:31That was one of the most miserable times of my life.
10:41I wanted to do something.
10:43I wanted to accomplish something.
10:45Well, I wasn't even graduating from high school.
10:50And then when I was 16, I started teaching in the rural schools around Marshall.
10:57And from that time on, I was very content.
11:08Dubow finally graduated from high school at the age of 23.
11:13She continued to teach and paid for her own education.
11:17Then she left home for the University of Chicago, the best in her field, history.
11:23When I began my graduate work in history at the University of Chicago, my field was international relations.
11:35And if I had continued at the University of Chicago, I would have continued in the international relations field.
11:43My master's thesis turned out well and was published, which, of course, gave me a great deal of confidence.
11:50But in the history field was closed and shut and barred against women.
11:57There wasn't anything at all that a woman could do to enter it.
12:02In the 1920s, university faculties were almost exclusively male.
12:09And even with a Ph.D., Angie Dubow would never hold a position in the history department of a university.
12:15All I wanted to do was have a chance to create something instead of just wasting my life.
12:26And I simply had to build my career in fields where I did have a chance.
12:35And I could rise.
12:36And I had a fair field and no favors.
12:42And I came back home to Oklahoma.
12:47Dubow signed a book contract with the Oklahoma University Press to pursue a new field of study,
12:55the history of the American Indian.
12:57I just thought it would be interesting to find out how the affairs of the five civilized tribes of Oklahoma were terminated.
13:08I didn't know that all of eastern Oklahoma was dominated by a criminal conspiracy to cheat the Indians out of their property
13:17and that this corrupted the legislature also.
13:21I didn't know those things were so.
13:27Nobody had ever written about that history of Oklahoma.
13:32And when I got into it, I couldn't honestly back out.
13:36And so, Dubow embarked on what would be the battle of her life,
13:43challenging the accepted version of Indian history and the state's most powerful leaders.
13:50It was not the story Angie's professor and friend, Edward Everett Dale, expected her to tell.
13:57Dr. Dale wrote some very nice, lively material, like recollections of life as a cattleman, cowboy recipes.
14:06But never anything, you know, that would test the academic metal, so to speak.
14:15Angie was turned the other way.
14:17Dr. Dale got a letter for me.
14:20There was a letter from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that opened every file.
14:26There was nothing held back.
14:28And I began to discover that official reports were inaccurate.
14:34They were putting things in there that were not true.
14:39Dubow discovered that the Dawes Commission, charged with carrying out federal Indian policy,
14:46lied about the Indians' reaction to that policy, known as allotment.
14:50The policy called for carving up the tribal lands, giving each Indian an individual farm or an allotment.
15:04The Indians, recognizing that this would destroy their ancient way of life, were in bitter opposition.
15:20From the earliest times, it was a cannon from the great holy force of Bud.
15:30You would hold your land in tribal common ownership rather than individual.
15:33Allotment had been tried earlier, and each time it had resulted in disaster for those who participated in it.
15:50The Dawes Commission established their headquarters at Muscogee, Indian Territory, in 1893.
16:00Despite the Indians' protests, the Dawes Commission sent a small army of clerks, field officers, and militia into the Indian nations.
16:16They crossed over 30,000 square miles to register every member of the five civilized tribes in preparation for allotment.
16:29They worked by persuasion, intimidation, and even fraud.
16:38Now, there might have been a fairly good argument in the name of progress or manifest destiny to break up the five Indian republics.
16:48But they didn't state their motives that way.
16:55They represented it as doing all this for the Indians, but they were doing it for the white people.
17:05It was very clear to the tribal government that this was a violation of the treaty rights that had already been established with the United States government.
17:13Because the treaty guaranteed that we would be able to remain together as a nation.
17:22Over strong tribal objections, the commission issued individual allotments.
17:30The Creeks were first, beginning in 1899, then the Seminoles, the Choctaw Chickasaws, and the Cherokees.
17:41There was a good number of people, I think, mostly in the southern part of Creek Nation, who really didn't want anything to do with the allotments.
17:50And even up till the time when they closed the allotments, these people refused to have allotments in their names.
18:03A resistance movement sprang up among the full bloods of most of the tribes.
18:08They demanded the right to live under the old treaties, known as Nighthawks and Snakes.
18:17They were living secretly on their ceremonial grounds, unnoticed, until they returned their allotments.
18:26Rumors suddenly spread of an Indian uprising.
18:28The Cavalry invaded the sacred grounds of their camp.
18:42The Indians offered no resistance.
18:43But nearly 100 men were arrested and carted off to jail in Muscogee.
18:49They were sentenced to long prison terms as a warning against further rebellion, and were given allotments against their will.
19:11Finally released, the resistance movement went underground.
19:26Their allotments sat idle for years.
19:27When I was at the university, I had courses in Oklahoma history.
19:41But those courses never mentioned the things that I was uncovering.
19:48So I went on with it.
19:50I'd spend months at Washington.
19:55I would go to the basement of the old interior building, and there were bundles tied in red tape.
20:09Truly, it's red tape.
20:11And I would untie those bundles, you know, and I'd take notes.
20:14And I just traveled all over Oklahoma.
20:21I've done so much driving that I knew where every bad corner was.
20:26I knew where every bad bridge was.
20:31And I'd spend weeks, months, at the Five Tribes Agency over at Muscogee.
20:38I began to find out more things, and they got worse all the time.
20:48Allotment opened the door to the Indian land.
20:53And all these white people came in with their anti-Indian feelings.
20:57It brought people from every direction, east, west, north, south, European countries.
21:07Indian territory was flooded with outsiders.
21:10And they were developing patterns of evasion of federal rules and regulations,
21:16and tribal rules and regulations, in order to get their way.
21:20Then came oil.
21:21They gave them allotment, and then discovered that they had placed them on top of oil.
21:34There's more than one way to skin a cat, and boy, they found the ways.
21:51And under the shadow of legality, plundered the Indian Estates.
21:56When the oil was found, the Indians' land produced an enormous amount of legal work.
22:14The Oklahoma Indian land laws was sort of a Bible to the old-time lawyers in Muscogee County.
22:23That was a compilation of all the treaties between the United States and the five different tribes.
22:32Land was a big point of litigation in the Muscogee Federal Court.
22:39Over 300 attorneys poured into Muscogee, a town of 40,000, just to handle the entanglements over Indian land.
22:47The Federal Court of Eastern Oklahoma had more business than any other district in the United States except the district of New York City.
22:56Now, each Indian had to deal with a written system of private ownership.
23:02Contracts, deeds, mortgages, powers of attorney, oil leases.
23:11The Federal Court of Oklahoma is now in session. God save this honorable court.
23:21They couldn't sign their name. Most of them didn't know how to read or write English.
23:28And they would put their X on the piece of paper and lose their individual land allotment.
23:34They would lose their 160 acres.
23:35The full blood was completely helpless when it came to defending himself before the courts of white society.
23:46And they were systematically robbed through the courts.
23:50In less than 20 years, 80% of the land was in white hands.
24:01Land worth millions, even billions in natural resources.
24:06It was purchased for 5, 10, 15 cents an acre.
24:10When I was growing up, all I heard was the stories about how they lost their land by fraudulent methods.
24:20And it always worked towards the downfall of that family.
24:25They didn't have anything left once they didn't have any land.
24:31Every citizen of each of these Indian republics received an allotment.
24:36So the child received an allotment.
24:39But the parents of the child didn't understand the procedures to qualify as guardians.
24:47So professional guardians arose who robbed the Indian children.
24:57It was so tempting and so easy.
25:00And the risk was so low.
25:02You rob a bank and the public wouldn't stand for that.
25:06But this other, well, those are Indians.
25:11It's a complete disregard for the rights of these people, even little children.
25:16God, the orphans.
25:19The Indians had always taken care of their orphans, either by sharing their family life or by orphan asylums which they established.
25:36But the orphans were completely defrauded.
25:41Some of these guardians might pick up 5, 10, 20 orphans and they'd fight and almost kill one another for guardianship of their allotments.
25:57Speculators searched for names of orphans whose allotments could be placed under guardianship.
26:08Lists like this one were supplied to politicians and judges in return for favors.
26:15The most unhappy experience of my life was when I was doing the research and still water strong.
26:27After oil entered, then it became apparent that an adult Indian was also incompetent.
26:34And they needed guardians also.
26:43The Bureau of Indian Affairs would collect the oil royalties and turn it over to the guardian.
26:51That was the only legal thing they could do.
26:54The BIA didn't approve of it, but they never could get it changed.
27:01The members of Congress from Oklahoma were always able to prevent it.
27:09White people were even murdering oil rich Indians.
27:13John Lewis, the Creek Fullblood of excellent character, was killed in an automobile accident, August 1, 1924.
27:26He left his heirs, his wife and children living quietly in old Fuskie County.
27:31But great oil production had begun on his Creek County allotment.
27:39And at the time of his death, his income was $24,000 a month.
27:44A petition was filed to declare the heirs incompetent.
27:59There were eight guardians for the family.
28:06Each of the guardian employed an attorney.
28:09Hence, there were 16 people authorized to draw fees from the estate.
28:15And they robbed the Indians.
28:24The 20s were hard times for the Indian.
28:26Part of the irrationalization used.
28:29They're unworthy anyhow.
28:31Many of them were depraved.
28:33And therefore, they are unworthy of this wealth.
28:38And it's there and we'll take it.
28:39By the 1920s, oil had made Oklahoma one of the richest states in the Union.
28:55Tulsa, an old Creek tribal town, was the oil capital of the world.
29:01Homesteaders now found themselves members of country clubs.
29:08The old fellow Gilliam.
29:09He had lots of money and then went busted.
29:18You hear about the abuse of the Indians.
29:23And there was some.
29:24And they were subject to the prey of avaricious people who would come in and sell them out.
29:36Because many of them had no particular conception of a dollar.
29:41They would know more how to handle cattle than they would a bank account.
29:45Here in Muscogee, there was a fellow named Haskell that was our first governor that was crookeder than two barrels of snakes.
29:57But I always like to think they're more honorable people than there are crooks.
30:01Those grafters were among the leaders of Oklahoma society in 1934 at the time I wrote this.
30:20And their deeds, their achievements were on the front page of all the Oklahoma newspapers.
30:28And the, uh, the, uh, the social activities of their wives were on the society page.
30:38And so I went ahead and named those prominent people and gave the full story of what they did.
30:45Many of them were still alive, or their heirs.
30:50If Dale had known what she was doing, he would have said, girl, don't do it.
30:56And Angie would have gone full speed ahead.
31:00Uh, Senator Robert L. Owen was one of them.
31:04Owen did it all.
31:06He was wicked.
31:08The man who had become the first governor of Oklahoma, Governor Haskell.
31:13Chairman of the George Commission was involved.
31:16The very men charged with protecting the Indians grew rich by plundering their land.
31:24Senator Owen, by fraud, by misrepresentation, and by using his position in Washington to change the law, became a millionaire from Cherokee Creek and orphan allotments.
31:37Owen's friend, Charles Haskell, the first governor, was indicted for conspiracy to defraud the Creek Nation.
31:50He settled out of court.
31:51Tams Bixby, the chairman of the Dawes Commission, and his entire staff were accused of speculating in Indian land.
32:04Following a Justice Department investigation, Bixby resigned.
32:08When I knew what they did and what the Amish people that had tried to check it were up against, I had a feeling of fear as I went through those dark corridors and basements and so on.
32:26I just had a feeling of fear.
32:27If you look at Oklahoma at that time, Indians being murdered, assassinated.
32:36I think she was in grave danger.
32:39I went back home with my notes.
32:431936 was the worst summer that we ever had.
32:48The terrible heat and drought.
32:51While I was typing, the perspiration used to just run in streams down my face and body.
33:01When I would write a chapter, I would read it to my mother.
33:06She would say, nobody will ever publish that book.
33:09But I went ahead and wrote it.
33:11And I submitted in Still the Water's Rock to the University of Oklahoma Press.
33:17And when I sent it to the press, they accepted it and intended to publish it.
33:28And Dr. Dale just said, we are trying to get so-and-so to give such-and-such to the University.
33:38And here he is in this book.
33:39He said, why should the author go out of her way to express the fact that Oklahoma is dishonest?
33:49Such a statement is an indictment upon the whole state.
33:53We have enough to defend without inviting criticism.
33:57The book is history and the facts are there.
34:02But it is dangerous to write in a book about it.
34:05Frankly, I am afraid of the book.
34:09So I violated history in telling the truth.
34:14His final decision was that the University should not publish it.
34:20It ended up by our tearing up the contract.
34:24And I went back to Marshall and hunted a publisher.
34:29This frontier area was so remote from educational institutions and knowledge of such things that I was sort of buried there.
34:53The fact that I had done good work didn't count very much.
35:00That was a period in which I had plenty to discourage me.
35:08I had no resources of any kind.
35:11I had helped my parents and helped my brother during his last days.
35:17But I didn't help them anymore.
35:20I wasn't able to help.
35:26But I was betting my life, and I mean that literally.
35:29I was betting my life on the rather shaky faith that some way would be provided.
35:36And so I applied for a grant for my next book,
35:41The History of the Creek Indians, The Road to Disappearance.
35:45Every bit of the work I was doing was new work.
35:49Angie DuBow was capable of being what we might call a lone wolf.
35:59Well, good morning, Alan.
36:01She just did not require the analysis and criticism of others.
36:07Cotton seed pulse around the road bushes.
36:10I think it's going to get cold pretty soon.
36:12It seemed as though it was taking forever to publish, and still the waters run.
36:19And things were just so desperately hard financially.
36:24Oklahoma was hard hit by the Depression, and DuBow was an out-of-work writer with no powerful friends.
36:32But she finally was hired by the Federal Writers Project to edit their guide to the state,
36:38after four candidates turned down the job.
36:40And I naturally wrote the chapter on the history of Oklahoma.
36:47But for some reason, after I left, a different chapter was substituted.
36:53I never knew who wrote it.
36:56But my name is on it, and every page has some horrible, ignorant error.
37:04It just makes me feel bad. It still makes me feel bad.
37:08When I think about this book.
37:14DuBow's chapter on Oklahoma history began Oklahoma came early under the white man's imperial ambitions.
37:22That chapter had been rewritten to stress white settlement.
37:29The land was described as vacant, with a few roaming bands of Indians, its potential undeveloped until the homesteaders arrived.
37:40Gone was DuBow's emphasis on the struggle for the land between Indians and whites, that had engulfed the area for almost half a century.
37:52This difference in historical interpretation would continue throughout her career.
37:58Well now this is my study.
38:02I have five file cabinets here.
38:06And this particular cabinet has the notes for Choctaw Republic and Still the Waterfront, two of my books.
38:18Now most of my books were written in this room also.
38:30Now these are, these are my notes.
38:44I didn't have the advantage of copying machines, and so I had to take all my notes by hand.
38:50And they hadn't even invented ballpoint pens.
38:54So I had to use a fountain pen.
38:58And still the waters run.
39:00The book Oklahoma Press rejected was finally published by Princeton University in 1940.
39:06Angie DuBow was 50 years old.
39:10I received wonderful reviews from scholars.
39:14But in Oklahoma, what happens to Indians when their land is broken up, didn't attract very much attention.
39:24And not the attention that I had hoped.
39:28If you'd ask a hundred persons on the street about that book, I doubt if over one or two would have known us even out.
39:34Frankly, I did not know of it at that time.
39:38It seems to have not appeared around here too much.
39:42Probably because some of the local people were pretty well involved in some of it.
39:48The president of the historical society at that time was Robert L. Williams.
39:52And he didn't have that book reviewed because some of his lawyer friends were probably involved.
39:58In fact, Williams, guardian of the historical society, former governor and federal judge,
40:06had himself been named in DuBow's book.
40:10The typical white person would shrug their shoulder and say, so what?
40:14I think that's what he'd say.
40:16I'm sure any of the Indians that read it, they thought, well, that's a good deal.
40:20It's at last given the story.
40:24We have lots of copies of Angie DuBow's book at the tribal library because those books were always checked out.
40:32Reading Angie DuBow, it was just like at last somebody told the story.
40:38There was documentation to back it up.
40:42Everything in it was proved.
40:44And everything in it was true.
40:46And it was a fact of history.
40:48It's the administration of public finance.
40:52And it's number six.
40:54And it goes behind this one.
40:56And I've got to sit down this very minute.
40:58In some states, she could have rung the bell, got the attention of reform-minded people.
41:06But she was just riding in a state of pervasive indifference.
41:12As you know, I get my main meal at noon.
41:16The cafe brings me a meal.
41:20It brings such generous servings, they can't eat at all.
41:26So I say, somehow it's a supper.
41:31And I put out a supper by myself.
41:36A spider got in here a few days ago.
41:40And she left her some little ones.
41:43I have no idea how many tiny spiders there were.
41:47I think we got rid of all of them.
41:50But I want to be sure there's another tiny spider a few days old in that toaster.
41:59Of course, I still had the problem of having to get jobs.
42:04And so I was working all the time.
42:06To support herself, DeBoe returned to teaching, substituting in rural high schools.
42:14During World War II, she was pastor at the local Methodist church.
42:19Late in her career, she had a full-time job as MAPS librarian at Oklahoma State University.
42:25But all my spare time, I was at my typewriter.
42:31Angie DeBoe wrote nine books and edited four from her home in Marshall, Oklahoma.
42:45Her output and reputation rivaled any historian in the West.
42:52But her view of Oklahoma history was not accepted there.
42:56And recognition came to her almost exclusively from outside Oklahoma.
43:00I wrote articles for Harper's Magazine and many reviews for the New York Times book review.
43:10Every time they got a book about the frontier or about the West, they sent that book to me.
43:16DeBoe emerged as the leading expert on Indian land.
43:28When Native Americans took action to regain their lost lands, it was her work that was cited to support their claims.
43:35Even the courts accepted her as an authority.
43:42I thought of the federal Indian policy as the true American imperialism.
43:48Indians should not have their land pulled out from under them and be left in poverty.
43:55Whenever anybody would ask me to speak, I spoke on one subject.
44:01The need to establish a new federal Indian policy.
44:06In many respects, she was an eloquent evangelist.
44:11It's almost a metaphysical force that I've observed time and time again.
44:17That frail little creature and the dynamo that she becomes when she gets before an audience.
44:24I felt if I told the truth, other people could use it.
44:30In my book, A History of the Indians of the United States, I have a chapter that says the white man gets a new chance.
44:43Everybody was teaching a course in Indian history in 1970.
44:48And everybody wanted it.
44:50The book just ran away.
44:53They'd never published one or two books and just ran away.
44:58One was a farm book.
45:03I used the wealth I had acquired on my trip to Egypt.
45:08I have always been proud of that picture because the camel turned his head at just exactly the right time.
45:16Oh, these are my pictures of Apollo 17.
45:24It just happened that I was working on Geronimo.
45:28My book Geronimo at the time of that moonshop.
45:32My picture is taken with Jason Betzenis, an apprentice warrior with Geronimo.
45:40He came to Oklahoma five years before I did.
45:44Brought here as a prisoner of war.
45:47He was a hundred years old and he died a few years after this picture was taken.
45:53This friendship led to interviews with the last surviving Apache warriors who had fought with Geronimo.
46:05They provided a rare collection of first-person accounts about the last Indians at war with the United States and of their legendary leader, Geronimo.
46:20I had heard of Geronimo all my life.
46:24Geronimo was often advertised as the tiger of the human race,
46:30was widely reported as having worn a blanket of human scalps.
46:35Of course, none of these wild stories were true.
46:43Dubois had a lifelong fascination with Geronimo.
46:47It led to her writing her last book about the most feared Indian in American history.
46:54Geronimo became infamous throughout the world as the last hostile leader to resist white settlement.
47:02He became a legend when his small band eluded 5,000 soldiers, one-fourth of the entire United States Army.
47:12Nobody could attain leadership among the Apaches that didn't have power.
47:17I mean with capital P, power.
47:21And he did have power.
47:23In fact, one of his followers said that once when he was traveling and he was in an exposed position and hadn't got to the mountains yet,
47:34he delayed the daybreak.
47:37And he finished by saying, I saw that myself.
47:40So it must be true.
47:43I wrote Geronimo right here on this typewriter.
47:48I have outlived several typewriters.
47:51But this is my last one.
47:54This man who was seen as a bloody murderer, Dubois saw as an impassioned patriot defending the tribal cause.
48:04At the age of 80, she cut through the myths to find the truth.
48:09Now, I started with that fictitious account that General Myers wrote of the great campaign in which he captured hundreds of Apaches.
48:21The most mendacious official report I ever read anywhere.
48:26He didn't capture anybody.
48:30The army said they captured the Apaches.
48:33But the Apaches said they surrendered.
48:36Angie Dubois accepted the Indian account.
48:41As Geronimo told her in later years,
48:44we placed a large stone on the blanket before us.
48:48Our treaty was to last till the stone should crumble to death.
48:53We raised our hands to heaven and took an oath not to do any wrong or to scheme
48:59against each other.
49:09The soldiers surrounded them.
49:1216 warriors, 14 women, and 6 children.
49:18Unarmed and unresisted.
49:21Almost 500 Apaches were rounded up, guilty and innocent alike.
49:33Packed into boxcars in intense heat, the Apaches' resistance had come to an end.
49:40Thus, the whole band, men, women, and children, began 27 years as prisoners of war at Fort Sill, North Oklahoma.
49:56Women and children shouldn't have gone to prison, but they did.
50:02These are two of my Apache friends, Mr. Benedict Jose and Mr. Moses Loco, grandson of Chief Loco of the Apaches.
50:15Well, this is the kindergarten bunch.
50:21That's your sister there.
50:23As a child, I used to hear them talk about always wanting to return to their native land.
50:32DuBose's entire career was devoted to describing how U.S. policies had destroyed the Indian way of life.
50:41There was a lot written about Geronimo, but she tried to bring out things that other writers skipped over.
50:50She spoke about manifest destiny, the policy of the government to overcome the Indians because of expansion and increasing of the population.
51:06They just had the idea that it was their destiny to rule the North America or the United States.
51:18And the Apaches resisted.
51:30Geronimo used these words.
51:33We are vanishing from the Earth, yet I cannot think we are useless or Usun would not have created us.
51:43How long will it be until it is said there are no Apaches?
51:48Four years after his death, the prisoners were set free.
52:00They numbered only 261.
52:03None of them is now living who remembers the hunted existence and the bloody encounters of two nations.
52:11I don't believe I thought Geronimo might be my last book.
52:18I don't believe I even thought about age at all in those days, although I was in my 80s.
52:25A decade later, in her 90s, Angie Dubow was honored in Oklahoma.
52:37Her portrait hung in the state capitol, along with humorist Will Rogers, Indian athlete Jim Thorpe, and several of the state's leaders that she exposed in her books.
52:49Almost 50 years after it was written, and still The Water's Run was published by Oklahoma University Press.
52:59The WPA Guide to Oklahoma was reissued with Dubow's chapter restored.
53:06For the first time in her career, one of her nine books was certified for Oklahoma classrooms.
53:18It was her only work of fiction.
53:23Dear Charles, I am so very grateful to you for the genius plus integrity that went into the painting of that portrait.
53:33It is not beautiful. That's correct. I have never been beautiful.
53:39But it shows the characteristics that I now know dominated my life.
53:45It was always there. In fact, my mother saw it in my infancy.
53:51Somehow, you captured the whole 95 years.
53:56Thanking you, Angie.
54:00Post-trip, I failed to mention this dominant characteristic.
54:06It was drive. It carried me through my whole lifetime.
54:12I have tried during these years to sort of bring things to a close.
54:28At my age, I don't have too many years to do that in, and maybe not any time at all.
54:34I'm going back to those early days of my childhood in Oklahoma.
54:42When I was 11 years old, I was thinking about the life that would stretch out before me.
54:54I didn't expect it to last until I was 95, but I did think it would last a long time.
55:03And I decided to commit that lot.
55:07And I decided that service and integrity were the important things.
55:16That did dominate my choices, and I still think that that is the creative use of a life rather than to try to grab what one can.
55:33And I decided to make it through.
55:35And I decided to make it through my life rather than to try to grab what one can.
55:39And I decided to make it through my life rather than to try to grab what one can.
55:43And I decided to make it through my life rather than to try to grab what one can.
55:53And I decided to make it through my life rather than to try to grab what one can.
55:59To his home.
56:16To his home.
56:19To his home.
56:22To his home.
56:26To his home.
56:28To his home.
56:38To his home.
56:40To his home.
56:52Major funding for this series is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
57:08and by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
57:14Corporate funding for the American experience is provided by Aetna,
57:18Insurance and Financial Services.
57:20For more than 130 years, a part of the American experience.
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