Angie Debo

Historian

• Born: January 30, 1890
• Birthplace: Beattie, Kansas
• Died: February 21, 1988
• Place of death: Enid, Oklahoma

Biography

Angie Debo devoted her life to the study of Native American history and culture. She wrote books about the history of Oklahoma and the struggles of American Indians. She successfully drew readers’ attention to the often shameful treatment of Native Americans.

Debo was born in Beattie, Kansas, in 1890, the daughter of Edward Peter, a farmer, and Lina Elbertha Cooper Debo. She was among the first class of ten students to graduate from Marshall High School in 1913. After graduation, Debo attended the University of Oklahoma, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1918. After graduating, she stayed in Enid, Oklahoma, to teach history at the high school for four years before enrolling at the University of Chicago, where she received her master’s degree in 1924. She earned her doctorate from the University of Oklahoma in 1933, writing a dissertation that was later published as The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic (1934).

In the years between 1924 and 1933, Debo was an assistant professor of history at West Texas State Teachers College in Canyon, Texas. After a year-long stint as a curator at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, she taught summer school at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College in 1935. She also taught history during several summers at Oklahoma State University. In 1947, Debo was a curator of maps and a librarian at Oklahoma State University, where she remained until 1955.

Debo received many awards for her work. In 1935, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic won the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association. She was the recipient of an Alfred A. Knopf History Fellowship in 1942 and a fellowship from the University of Oklahoma in 1946. In 1950, Debo was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Her biography Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place (1976) received the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association in 1977, the Western Heritage Wrangler Award for Nonfiction in 1978, and the Biennial Book Award from the Southwestern Library Association in 1978. In 1987, she was presented with the Governor’s Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association.

Debo’s studies of Native Americans have been cited as evidence in federal court cases involving tribal land rights. Reviewers in 1970 considered A History of the Indians of the United States (1970) the best available source on Native American history. Debo died in 1988 at the age of ninety- eight.