And Still the Waters Run

Rating:
Summary: A sad tale of betrayal, not well written
Review: Angie Debo, now recognized as one of the finest historians of Native Americans, was inducted into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame in 1993 for her outstanding work, five years after her death. This recognition, however, came after a long career in which Debo initially struggled against the establishment in her efforts to bring to light the plight of Native Americans in the West, particularly with regard to the ill treatment they received from land and resource hungry settlers. And Still the Waters Run, her study of the Five Civilized Nations in Oklahoma in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, provoked controversy among her colleagues and critics, and was published not by the University of Oklahoma Press, which refused to honor its agreement to print it, but by Princeton. This tale of the machinations of whites to defraud Native Americans and the theft of Indian property, with the many difficulties it engendered, is still in print six decades later.
Simply put, And Still the Waters Run is the story of the process by which whites, in the forms of government officials and individuals hungry for land, oil and coal, dispossessed Native Americans in Oklahoma of their wealth "by the legislative enactment and court decree...and the lease, mortgage and deed of the land shark." (vii) This method, begun in the late 1880s, contrasted with former battles between the United States and the Indians, in which military might typically concluded all conflicts in the American West. Instead, Debo argues that Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and Creeks lost their land, minerals, coal and oil through broken treaties, allotment and fraud.
Depo depicts the Five Tribes in Oklahoma in the late nineteenth century as being firmly established in the new territory after the trauma of the 1830s removals. The Indians were determined to resist further encroachments and contentions with whites, particularly with regard to land ownership. This was not meant to be. Debo describes a process by which whites forced treaties and congressional legislation (especially the Dawes Act of 1887) upon the various tribes in order to facilitate the expropriation of Indian lands and associated natural resources. Loss of land was accompanied by "the surrender of tribal institutions," (31) namely collective land holding and native councils. Tribal regimes, Debo contends, were liquidated to facilitate the division of land among Indians, which in turn eased the process by which whites were able to purchase it. Although she concedes that many government officials genuinely attempted to protect individual Indian allottees, "the general effect of allotment was an orgy of plunder and exploitation probably unparalled in American history." (91)
Debo goes on to detail the ineffectual government guardianship of Indian assets, and the immense graft on the part of "a horde of despoilers." (92) This period brought poverty and abject despair to Native peoples in Oklahoma, victims of swindlers and government bureaucrats alike. Some relief was realized upon Oklahoma statehood and various federal laws in the early 20th century, as well as through "a tangle of litigation." (203) Nevertheless, Debo paints a bleak picture of the rapaciousness of whites, ineptitude among civil leaders responsible for Indian protection and helplessness of overpowered Indians.
And Still the Waters Run is remarkable for the depth of its research, no less so because it was written in the 1930s by a woman without an academic position. It is well-documented with a variety of sources including government papers, personal interviews, newspapers and manuscripts. Nevertheless, despite the passion Debo felt for the injustices done to her subject tribes, her book suffers from dry prose and a plodding narrative. Debo seems to describe every rule and regulation imposed on the tribes, and describes complex litigation in such detail that readers can easily lose sight of her overall theme. Her painstaking trek through years of Indian misfortunes, while important to our understanding of western U.S. history, is unfortunately regrettably monotonous.

Rating:
Summary: It paints a clear picture of the Native American betrayals
Review: Angie really tells it like it was. She uncovered all of the horrable truths from the basement of the Interior. This book tells all about what they wouldn't teach in school, and the government cover-ups. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the truth.

Rating:
Summary: Broken Promises
Review: I have read this book twice--one around 1990 and again a year or so ago. It's not an easy read as the text is a bit dry and pedantic. (I think her later books are easier to read.)

Debo's conclusions, based on extensive research, are at times sweeping and fleeting--at least in the sense of trying to assess how widespread or damaging a practice was.

That said, Debo's book is without peer in chronicling the theft of Indian land, coal, oil, and timber by mostly white citizens. Most despicable was the taking from the children and the very elderly--the first lacking majority and the second, literacy.

Debo frequently hits on federal vs. state rights and responsibilities. The feds were unhappy with the seemingly small amount of protection being afforded the Indians. The leaders of Oklahoma, a new state, said the state could take care of the so-called "Indian problem." And the state did. But the solution promised bore little resemblance to the solution delivered.

In part due to her documentation of these leaders and what they did, the University of Oklahoma Press refused to print the book, a job that, as best as I can recall, migrated east to Princeton University.