View the 2007 Companion Reader - OKLAHOMA chautauqua

ARTS & HUMANITIES COUNCIL OF TULSA

Good evening, and welcome to the 2007 Oklahoma Chautauqua. The Arts
& Humanities Council of Tulsa in association with the Oklahoma Humanities
Council is pleased to bring you the finest in living history re-enactors,
providing life-long learning to the residents of five communities in Oklahoma
– Altus, Enid, Ponca City, Tishomingo, and Tulsa!
We are especially pleased to be able to provide this program free of charge,
thanks to support from the Oklahoma Humanities Council and our presenting
sponsor, The Mervin Bovaird Foundation. We also thank the additional sponsors
listed on the back of this program.
Special thanks to OSU-Tulsa for providing this wonderful event space and
tent, as well as very helpful staff and volunteers. And to Williams for printing
the Companion Reader.
I would also like to acknowledge our Chautauqua Committee chaired by
Kate Reeves, as well as our Chautauqua Coordinator, Angela Fox, who work
diligently to make this the largest (and best) living history program in the
State of Oklahoma!
The theme for this year’s Chautauqua, Celebrating a Centennial: One Hundred
Years of Oklahoma Heroes, took on very special meaning with the passing
of a very dear friend of the Oklahoma Chautauqua, Oklahoma historian and
biographer, Danney Goble. Danney performed the characters of Stephen
Douglas, Clarence Darrow, James Longstreet, and Huey Long in the early years
of the Oklahoma Chautauqua, and often attended the annual event. Bob
Blackburn, executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, noted that
Danney, “…had an endearing combination of wit and cynicism. Sometimes
it got him into trouble, but he would look at you with that twinkle in his eye,
and it was as if he were saying, ‘I got ‘em.’”
We are dedicating this year’s Chautauqua to the memory of this very special
man. Danney was very much an Oklahoma hero. And we will miss him!
We hope you enjoy your time with us this year, celebrating the great people
of the great state of Oklahoma! We look forward to seeing you again in 2008.
Warm regards,
Ken Busby
Executive Director & CEO
Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa
1

The first decade and a half of the Twentieth Century was a period of high
hopes in the United States and in Oklahoma. These years, known as the
Progressive Era,witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of reform spirit as
Americans joined to purge their nation of the evils which had risen from rapid
industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Heavily influenced by an
unlikely amalgamation of the late Nineteenth Century philosophies of Social
Darwinism, the Gospel of Wealth, and the Social Gospel and inspired by the
writings of a myriad of muckraking journalists, the progressives launched a
veritable crusade to eradicate all that was wrong with society and man.
Waite Phillips
Page 4
Kate Barnard
Page 8
Frank Frantz
Page 12
Lynn Riggs
Page 16
Will Rogers
Page 20
The infant state of Oklahoma, born of the belief that those who could best
use the land should have it yet populated by many who lived on the edge of
poverty, embraced progressivism, hoping to create a more humane political,
social, and economic system which would serve as a shining example to
its sibling states. Institutions and regulations created by the lengthy state
Constitution reflected the desire to leave no stone unturned in the state’s
efforts to curtail corruption, abuse of privilege, and social and economic
inequities. For to its framers, this Constitution and the new state it created
represented the last great hope for mankind- a final opportunity to ”get
it right.” Thus on November 16, 1907, when people gathered to witness
the wedding of the cowboy and Indian maiden that symbolized the Twin
Territories’ transformation into the single state of Oklahoma, hopes ran
uncommonly high. Those that gathered, be they homesteaders, cowboys,
Indians, laborers, oilmen, or politicians, firmly believed in the promise of
perfectibility that ushered in the Twentieth Century. They included Frank
Frantz who served as Oklahoma’s last Territorial Governor and hoped for a
political career in the new state. There was also Kate Barnard, Oklahoma’s
first Commissioner of Charities, who was concerned with the plight of
the poor, laborers, children, and the incarcerated. Waite Phillips came to
Oklahoma to join his brothers as an influential and prosperous figure in the
oil business. Will Rogers, born of an influential family in Indian Territory, left
the state as a young man to find his place as asymbol of the common man on
stage, in the movies, and in the press. Lynn Riggs, born outside Claremore,
also found his destiny outside the state, but returned to his roots to write his
most famous plays, including Green Grow the Lilacs.
All of these individuals possessed extraordinary talents and promise.
However, dissatisfaction with their own achievements marked their careers.
Driven individuals, they each contributed a great deal to early Oklahoma,
but they died believing they could have achieved more. In many ways, their
careers mirror the fate of the high hopes that marked the inauguration of the
new century and the new state.
Dr. Virginia Bellows,
Associate Professor of History, Tulsa Community College
Memorials, honorariums, and other
endowment contributions may be
made payable to:
The Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa
2210 South Main Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74114
Sponsors
In its 16th continuous year, the Oklahoma Chautauqua is a program of the
Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa. Funding is provided in part by a grant
from the Oklahoma Humanities Council and the National Endowment of the
Humanities. Major support for this program is provided by the following: The
Mervin Bovaird Foundation, Oklahoma State University – Tulsa, Centennial
Commission, We the People, Chesapeake Energy, Downtown Double Tree
Hotel and Williams
Chautauqua Committee Members
2006-2007
Kate Reeves, Current Chair 2006-2007
Mark Barcus, Past Chair 2005-2006
Angela Fox, Program Director
Harry Dandelles
Beverly Dieterlen
Nancy Feldman
Gini Fox
Eleanore Graham
Marilyn Inhofe-Tucker
Jeffery Maxwell
Patty McNeer
Marilyn Mitchell
Sandy Moore
Ron Nick
Victoria Peterson
David Pettyjohn
Paula Settoon
Kim Smith
Laurie Sundborg
Janet Thomas
Martin Wing
______________________
Layout/Design by Judy Sigl
Photographs by John Fancher
3

Waite Phillips: Oklahoma’s
Centennial Oilman By Bill Worley
Waite Phillips
Born in Iowa as an identical twin and younger brother to the founders of Phillips Petroleum Company, Waite Phillips [1883-1964] experienced a classic 19th century rural
American upbringing. He learned to farm and to wish to experience life beyond the farm. His identical twin Wiate died at age 19 after the two spent three years working their
way across the American West.
After a few years back in Iowa, Waite moved to Oklahoma to work for his older brother Frank in the oil fields near Bartlesville. In 1914, when Frank and brother L.E. Phillips
contemplated leaving the oil business, Waite struck out on his own. Over the next decade he built one of the most effective independent oil companies in the country. Selling
that in 1925, Waite turned to building in Tulsa and ranching in New Mexico. His office buildings and magnificent Tulsa residence [Philbrook] became late 1920s showplaces along
with his New Mexico ranch [Philmont].
In the late 1930s, Phillips contributed Philbrook to Tulsa for an art museum, Philmont to the Boy Scouts for a camping center, and his Philtower and Philcade buildings to each as
endowments. After World War II, Waite and Genevieve Phillips moved to southern California where he invested in real estate and continued giving away his fortune. Considered
as one of the most philanthropic of all Oklahoma oilmen, Waite Phillips is a model of a successful businessman who gave back in untold measure.
He was born in Iowa and died in California, living about 20 years in each state.
But, it’s the 40 years he lived in Oklahoma that made Waite Phillips and helped
make Oklahoma.
At one level, Waite’s brothers were keys to his drive toward success in the
Oklahoma oil patch. Born an identical twin just after his brother Wiate, Waite
seems to have lived his first 19 years somewhat in Wiate’s shadow. Wiate was
minutes older but definitely the more assertive and risk-taking of the two. Sadly,
Wiate died of appendicitis that developed into fatal peritonitis in Spokane,
Washington in 1902.
The tragic loss of his twin in 1902 ended a three-year sojourn for the brothers that
took them all over the American West and even into British Columbia. They worked
and played in mining camps, booming cities and even spent a season trapping
animals in the Rocky Mountains. Possibly it was this amazingly restless period that
gave Waite his desire always to see what else could be done and what new places
he could conquer. Clearly, the loss of Wiate forced him to take chances and discover
new paths much more than he might ever have done on his own.
Then, there was Frank, Waite’s oldest brother [in a family with six boys and three
girls living into adulthood]. Frank had the first-son urge from the beginning. He
was the first of the Phillips brothers to come to Indian Territory, the first Phillips to
drill successfully for oil, and the one who established what is today the larger half
of Conoco-Phillips Petroleum. While Frank and Waite helped and admired each
other, in business they each wanted to be the boss.
So, Waite Phillips got his oil field start with Frank and another brother, L. E., in
1906 in Indian Territory. Waite served as a field manager for the company that
Frank and L. E. assembled out of Bartlesville as an oil and banking concern. For
eight years Waite worked and learned the business. He literally started in the field
by carrying supplies to the rigs, but rather quickly moved into the more responsible
management positions.
However, when Frank and L. E. seriously thought about leaving oil for banking in
1914, the formerly cautious Waite struck out on his own. The death of his more
risk-taking twin pushed Waite early in the century to take on some of Wiate’s
personality. Marriage to Genevieve Elliott in 1909 [he had courted her for six years
almost ever since Wiate died] only strengthened his resolve and his restlessness.
Initially, they lived in Pawhuska, but moved to Bartlesville and built a home near
the growing Frank Phillips compound.
When he left Oklahoma briefly in 1914, Waite took the money gained from his
sale of stock to Frank and L.E. and launched into buying leases and drilling wells.
First in the Smackover/El Dorado district of Arkansas, then returning to Oklahoma
and the Okmulgee field, and ultimately all across eastern Oklahoma and southern
Kansas, the far-flung enterprises that he merged into the Waite Phillips Company
in 1922 took shape.
Oklahoma oil came in a series of discoveries of fields, pools and domes. Under the
“law of capture,” the first driller to tap into a pool could extract as much of the
crude oil as possible before others sunk their wells to dilute the output. This led to
a tremendous race in most fields to get there “firstest with the mostest.” It meant
that men like the Phillipses and others had to lease widely and drill quickly. It
was not always the most conservation-oriented approach, but it did create some
fabulous fortunes for the men who got the leases and could borrow the money to
finance the field operations.
To direct this rapidly growing integrated empire of oil wells, pipelines, refineries
and gasoline stations, Waite moved with Genevieve to Tulsa in 1918. That
became home base until 1945. Interestingly, Waites developed his oil company
into a complete line of the petroleum business from drilling to refining to retail
distribution before Frank and L.E. even contemplated consolidating their efforts
into Phillips Petroleum and opening the familiar “Phillips 66” service stations
through the Midwest and Southwest.
Waite and Genevieve’s daughter Helen Jane was born in 1911 in Bartlesville while
Waite worked for Frank and L.E. Their son Elliott, nicknamed “Chope,” entered
the world in 1918 in Okmulgee, just before the family moved to Tulsa. Helen
Jane had difficulty coping with being an oilman’s daughter and lived a rather
tragic life. “Chope” Phillips recognized that he loved the outdoors early on and
always maintained a New Mexico ranch throughout his life. He expressed a bit of
frustration when Waite donated Chope’s favorite, Philmont, to the Boy Scouts, but
together they bought a neighboring ranch near Watrous, NM, which Chope worked
the rest of his life.
It was said that Waite could find oil almost by magic. Instead, what he really
developed a keen eye for the lay of the land. While managing rigs for Frank and
L.E. in the early days, he noticed that particular formations often yielded the
best results. Waite had only a sixth grade formal education, supplemented by a
six-month business course taken in Iowa just after Wiate died. His skill in finding
oil suggested that he might have made a great oil geologist had the opportunity
been available.
“The only things we keep are those
we give away. All things should
be put to their best possible use.”
- Waite Phillips, Oil Man, p. 401.
Waite Phillips built up a number of separate companies that he merged into the
Waite Phillips [or “Philco”] Company in 1922. He sold this in 1925 to a New York
financial company that combined it with the Barnsdall Company. Waite received
5

$25 million in cash. Largely, he became an investor and philanthropist from this
point forward in his life.
It is his philanthropic thrust which rested in part on his restless nature that
resulted in the two greatest gifts of his lifetime—the donation of his family
mansion named “Philbrook” in Tulsa and of his favorite ranch in New Mexico,
“Philmont,” to the Boy Scouts of America. These two gifts created public entities
that have educated and influenced generations of Oklahomans and Americans in
the fine arts and in outdoor life.
Philbrook stands as Tulsa’s jewel of the fine arts as it performs an extensive
educational program for children and adults in addition to the daily opening
With regard to the Native American
of its marvelous galleries and rotating exhibits. Its marvelous grounds and
art collection at Philbrook, Waite
Phillips said: “Oil fortunes were
made out of the Indian lands. I have
a deep feeling of gratitude to the
American Indian and I want to see
his culture preserved.” - Oil Man, p. 401.
wonderfully varied rooms provide a delightful arts experience for Tulsa and the
whole of Oklahoma.
Philmont is the signature camping experience for boys all over America. “Going
to Philmont” becomes almost a rite of passage for Boy Scouts from Florida to
Washington state and from California and Oklahoma to Maine and Massachusetts.
Waite believed that gaining true outdoor experience should be a part of the
essential “growing up” experience of every American boy. Philmont provides that
opportunity in a spectacular setting.
Sources:
Louis F. Burns, A History of the Osage People [Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 2004], especially Chapters 20 & 21, pp. 390-444. This entire study provides a
wealth of information about this pivotal people in the history of Oklahoma.
Michael Wallis, Beyond the Hills: The Journey of Waite Phillips [Oklahoma City:
Oklahoma Heritage Association, 1995]. This biography is based heavily on
the journals of Waite Phillips preserved by his son Elliott “Chope” Phillips.
________, Oil Man: The Story of Frank Phillips and the Birth of Phillips Petroleum
[New York: Doubleday, 1988]. Waite is a small character in the big drama
of “Uncle Frank.” Both brothers contributed greatly to the making of
Oklahoma along with the Osage people from under whose land Frank and
Waite Phillips pumped “Black Gold.”
Both Philbrook and the main house at Philmont were designed by famed Kansas
City architect Edward Buehler Delk. Each remains an architectural masterpiece to
the present day. Delk also designed Waite’s Philtower and his brother Frank’s town
home in Bartlesville, as well as the mansion of H. V. Foster in that city.
Just before his death in 1964, Waite Phillips wrote a late entry in his lifelong
journal: “The only things we keep permanently are those we give away.” He and
Genevieve had established rather deep roots in Los Angeles in the almost twenty
years they lived together there. Some of their generosity naturally flowed toward
institutions and community efforts in that region as well.
The Iowa farm boy who helped shape early Oklahoma and the American oil
business died of heart failure in Bel Aire, California in January 1964, just after his
81st birthday. Even in death he continued to give.
His will provided $1 million to assist Boy Scouts to attend Philmont even though
they could not afford the experience financially. He left $1.5 million to various
public and private institutions in southern California and another $2 million to
Oklahoma institutions. $650,000 went to further endow the Philbrook Art Center,
$500,000 to the University of Tulsa, $650,000 to hospitals in Tulsa, Okmulgee and
Bartlesville and $200,000 to the Tulsa YMCA.
“The only things we keep are those
we give away. All things should
be put to their best possible use.”
- Waite Phillips, Oil Man, p. 401.
Oklahoma could not have benefited more from a native son or daughter. Waite and
Genevieve Phillips received and gave back to Oklahoma in great measure. Waite
became, along with some others in the industry, oil’s way of creating a better
Oklahoma for the 21st century.
7

Kate Barnard: Intrepid
Pioneer to Centennial Legend
By Dixie Belcher
Kate Barnard
Kate Barnard (1875-1930) lived in Oklahoma Territory and worked as a secretary to the Territorial House of Representatives. While stumping for the Constitutional Convention she
addressed the problems of child labor, sweatshops, tenements, and juvenile justice. She combined forces with Pete Hanraty on labor issues and Alfalfa Bill Murray on farm issues
and was nominated as the only woman on the Democratic ticket for the office of Charities and Corrections. Known as the “good angel of Oklahoma” she won handily in Oklahoma’s
first election as a new state and was the first woman to be elected in the United States to a major political office. In her reign as Commissioner from 1907-1915 she worked for
child labor reform, compulsory education, better pay and working conditions, improved conditions in jails, hospitals and mental institutions. She uncovered scandals involving the
treatment of Oklahoma prisoners in Lansing, Kansas and the misuse of funding for Indian orphans by their guardians.
Kate Barnard was one of the most revered women in Oklahoma in the early 1900s,
known as “Our Kate, Oklahoma Kate, the Good Angel of Oklahoma, and Joan of Arc
of Oklahoma” for her tireless work for Progressive reform. She was responsible for
the legislation and implementation of social services and correctional programs that
we take for granted today. A men’s correctional facility holds her name and a recent
statue was commissioned for the state capitol rotunda. Sculptor Sandra VanZandt of
Oologah a presents Kate in her inaugural dress sitting on a bench with a copy of her
report in her lap. In 1994 Danney Goble mentions her in his Story of Oklahoma, in
1997 Linda Willams Reese includes a chapter in Women of Oklahoma and in 2001 and
2003 two biographies were published of her life by Bob Burke and Glenda Carlille,
and Lynne Musslewhite and Suzanne Jones Crawford, respectively. Previous to that
very little mention was made of the petite social reformer.
The notable exceptions much earlier in the century, however, were Angie Debo’s
And Still the Waters Run documentation of injustices toward Indians that Barnard
uncovered during her last term of office and Ambassador Bryce of England’s
compliment of Oklahoma’s constitution, giving Barnard credit, “It is the finest
document of human liberty written since the Declaration of Independence, and the
credit for making it such is due, principally, to the activities of a single woman – Kate
Barnard.” (Burke/Carlille)
Why was there such a long period of time between being adored and then ignored
Probably because her personality was rigid; she viewed the world in terms of rights
and wrongs. This frame of mind was both her greatest asset and fault. Strangely she
was unwilling to compromise while in office but former alliances brought her to the
attention of the men in power in the territory prior to statehood. In her late twenties
she campaigned throughout the territory for an alliance between farmers and labor.
Her speaking engagements filled halls and street corners with eager followers who
cast the votes in Oklahoma’s first election as a new state. Kate championed her
many causes in fiery editorials in the Daily Oklahoman and was considered an able
spokesperson in print and at the podium. One press report described her as “sweet
and dainty as a wild flower and as refreshing as an Oklahoma breeze.” (Musslewhite/
Crawford) Oklahoma historian Angie Debo at age seventeen attended a speech given
by Barnard and was moved by her eloquence and passion.
Ms. Barnard posed challenges to the early pioneers, asking for their assistance in
solving problems that children faced during this time. After one of her editorials,
titled “What are we to do about our poor” citizens appeared at her door with
clothing, bedding and furniture to be distributed to those in need. In 1906, the only
real form of public communications was the newspaper, and Kate was the voice of the
people. The Territorial Legislature reacted to Kate’s popularity by declaring that the
Office of Charities and Corrections could be directed by a “he or a she.” Kate Biggers, a
spokeswoman for suffrage ran on the opposing ticket. Barnard won the title of
Commissioner of Charities and Corrections in Oklahoma’s first election as a new state
and was the first woman to hold a major political office in the nation.
Kate Barnard was born in Nebraska in 1875, although she only admitted to a
birthdate of 1879. Her mother died when Kate was only 18 months old. She stated in
an article for The Independent, “My mother died when I was young that I cannot even
9
remember her face. With her death the light on my pathway of life was blown out.” Her
father had a brief second marriage but Kate was estranged from her step-brother
from this marriage and her two step-brothers from her mother’s first marriage. Kate
had a difficult childhood living with maternal grandparents for a while and other
relatives and in her teens traveling with her father to several failed business ventures.
She was thrilled to be called to help her father in securing a claim in Oklahoma
Territory in her teens. She lived alone on the claim while her father practiced law in
Oklahoma City. At age 16 she moved to a house he built on West Reno in Oklahoma
City and was able to attend a catholic school.
What she saw from her windows overlooking Reno Street were settlers like herself,
only many with fewer resources. These people were ragged, hungry and homeless.
After a brief stint as a teacher, Kate worked as a stenographer and then served as
director of the United Provident Society. She became more and more outraged by
the lack of opportunities for the disadvantaged and wrote more editorials asking for
assistance in caring for them, not just with donated clothing and furniture but with
jobs. A turning point was her appointment to promote the Oklahoma statehood
exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. During her time there she toured the
slums and factories with a newspaper reporter who used Barnard’s descriptions of
those circumstances, “No man can deal intelligently with life until he first understands
how all classes of men live and under what conditions they make their daily bread.
Books are tools with which to work out human intelligence. How to apply this
intelligence can only be learned by knowledge. To get this knowledge I spent months
of life itself touring factories and workshops. I have breathed coal dust with children
in American coal breakers; I have turned sick with the pale young girls who are slowly
poisoned as they bottle arsenic in American drug houses; and I have breathed the glass
dust which was killing the child laborers at my side.” (Barnard)
Historians David Baird and Danney
Goble describe Barnard: Everything
she asked for she got: an eighthour
work day for state employees,
prohibition of child labor in mines
and factories, health and safety
legislation for workers—and more.
Even though women did not have the vote until 1920, the years in the early 1900s
were charged with social change, primarily implemented by women. As volunteers
they gave of their time, energy and resources championing suffrage, prohibition,
hygiene, improved working conditions and education. Barnard was at the forefront
of all of these movements, except suffrage. Although she believed in helping the

Kate Barnard addressing the Farmers if
they were to vote against Child Labor Law:
I hope that in the fall of the year when the
sap goes out of your cornstalks and leaves
the stalks dry and dead and rasping and
bare, that God will turn your cornstalks into
the skeletons of little children and shake
their dry bones at you.
poor she began to question the effectiveness of charity without legislation. “Charity
is the weakest of weapons to combat poverty. It is like pouring water through a sieve.
What the poor need is justice and a way to earn a living.” (Barnard)
She returned to Oklahoma Territory to campaign for reforms that she wanted to see
written into the constitution when the territory became a state. Joseph Thoburn
wrote in 1916 that Barnard was “trusted by the two largest classes of voters, the
farmers and labor union men, and she was the favorite speaker on the democratic
side. Slender, graceful, petite, with dark hair and skin and flashing eyes, and with a
rapid-fire articulation which was the despair of the reporters, she painted pictures of
the wrongs of childhood, of the suffering of minors without the protection of law, of
needs of orphans, of the inequity of sending juvenile criminals to jails; of the cruelties
practiced upon the insane and the necessity of scientific hospital care; of sweatshops
and overwork and underpay, thrilling her vast audiences with her earnest eloquence.”
During Kate’s two terms of office, she lobbied for the Child Labor Law, ensured the
building of the state’s first prison, initiated the reform for a Juvenile Court, cleaned up
mental institutions and closed some substandard facilities. Her final crusade came
with her investigation of guardianships of orphaned Indian children. She exposed
influential persons in Oklahoma who were defrauding Indian wards of the state
for their oil monies. Although she recovered over twelve million dollars, she was
ostracized by the press who had previously adored her and found her departmental
budget drastically cut. She found herself without the power she had grown
accustomed to in her first term. She underestimated the power wielded by the men
in charge, some of whom she had made her enemies. She was no longer an angel
and became expendable. She decided not to run for a third term.
In failing health, she spent the remaining fifteen years of her life in obscurity. She
was found dead in the Egbert Hotel in Oklahoma City, penniless, powerless and
unknown. Barnard was buried in an unmarked grave in Fairlawn Cemetery until
the early 1980s when a group of anonymous women purchased a headstone with
this inscription: “Intrepid pioneer leader of social ethics in Oklahoma 1879-1930.”
Thoburn’s description of Barnard, “Few women could sway the mind of a whole state
for ten years…her work is constructive statecraft and entitles her to a position among
the foremost statesmen of the age.”
In presenting this remarkable character in the centennial year I use Kate’s words as
much as possible. She wrote many letters, reports, articles and memories of her
ideas and history that I have utilized. Barnard was a captivating storyteller and I look
forward to retelling her stories one hundred years later.
Works Cited
Primary sources:
Articles, Reports and letters from Kate Barnard from the Julee Short collection at
Oklahoma Dept. of Libraries; Barnard files at the Oklahoma History Center; Alice
Robertson collection at University of Tulsa Library.
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING MAGAZINE, 1912. “Through the Windows of Destiny. How I
Visualized my Life Work”.
Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections at the Thirty-fifth
Annual Session, Richmond, Va., May 6-13, 1908. “Shaping the Destinies of the
New State”.
First State Conference of Charities, Guthrie, April 29-30, 1908.
Third Annual Conference of State Charities and Corrections, Muskogee, Okla.,
April 29, 1910.
Fourth Annual Report of Commission of Charities and Corrections, Oct. 1,
1911-Oct. 1, 1912.
THE SURVEY MAGAZINE, vol. 23, Oct. 1909-March, 1910. “Human Ideals in
State Government”.
STRUM’S OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE, Feb. 1908. “Oklahoma’s Child Labor Laws”.
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Feb. 16, 1912. “Grafters After Me, Says Kate Barnard,
Oklahoma’s Guardian Angel Hits Foes Appeals to Legislature for Hearing”.
Letter to Mr. Byron E. White, Supt. Cantonment Indian Agency, Jan. 26, 1911.
Letter to Hon. C. Haskell, Muskogee, Feb. 19, 1912.
Secondary sources:
Books:
Blackburn, Bob, L. HEART OF THE PROMISED LAND: OKLAHOMA COUNTY. Woodland
Hills, California: Windsor Publications, 1982.
Burke, Bob and Glenda Carlile. KATE BARNARD. OKLAHOMA’S GOOD ANGEL.
Oklahoma Statesmen Series, UCO Press, Edmond, OK, 2001.
Carlile, Glenda. BUCKSKIN, CALICO, AND LACE. Southern Hills Publishing, OKC, 1990.
Debo, Angie, AND STILL THE WATERS RUN. New York: Gordian Press, Inc. 1966.
Goble, Danney. PROGRESSIVE OKLAHOMA: THE MAKING OF A NEW KIND OF STATE.
Norman, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
Musslewhite, Lynn and Suzanne Jones Crawford. ONE WOMAN’S POLITICAL
JOURNEY. Kate Barnard and Social Reform 1875-1930. University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 2003.
Reese, Linda Williams. WOMEN OF OKLAHOMA 1890-1920. Univ. of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1997.
Thoburn, Joseph B. HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA. 1916.
Thurman, Melvena, ed. WOMEN IN OKLAHOMA: A CENTURY OF CHANGE. Oklahoma
Historical Society, OKC, 1982.
Truman, Margaret. WOMEN OF COURAGE. William Morrow and Company, NY. 1976.
Articles:
DAILY OKLAHOMAN, Feb. 23, 1941. “Kate Barnard…Unsung Heroine”.
ORBIT MAGAZINE SECTION, Dec. 10, 1972. Bracken, Nell, “90 Pounds of Human
Dynamite”.
TULSA TRIBUNE, Aug. 26, 1970. “Sooner Lib Leader of Long Ago”.
TULSA TRIBUNE, Oct. 25, 1972. Wittkopp, Pearl, “Tulsan Traces Life of Early Oklahoma
Humanitarian”.
TULSA TRIBUNE, July 21, 1975. March, Ralph, “Our Kate…Heroine of Poor Fought
for Reform”.
JOURNAL OF THE WEST. Hougen, Harvey, “Kate Barnard and the Kansas Penitentiary
Scandal 1908-1909”.
I bequeath the example of
my public life to the youth of
the world praying they may
dedicate their own lives to
securing justice to the poor of
their generation as I did mine.
“Stump Ashby Saves the Day”, edited with an Introduction and an Afterward by Julee
Short, JOURNAL OF THE WEST, vol.12, April 1973.
11

Frank Frantz:
Oklahoma Territory’s Rough
Rider Governor By Gary M. Gray
Frank Frantz
He shared the “Crowded Hour” with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt…it was Frank Frantz that planted the flag of the Rough Riders’ Troop A at the Spanish blockhouse atop one
of the San Juan Hills. That moment of extreme bravery was to lead Frantz to become the Osage Indian Agent during the tribe’s crucial years of allotment, oil leases, and white
graft, then as the last Territorial Governor of Oklahoma.
Frantz was President Roosevelt’s right-hand man as TR sought to bring Indian and Oklahoma Territories in together as a state. As such, Frantz managed the Oklahoma Enabling
Act, fought battles with the railroads and oil industries, called for a Constitutional Convention, helped draft geographical boundaries for convention delegates, and reported
Democratic excesses to President Roosevelt.
Eventually, Frantz fought a losing battle against Democratic nominee Charles Haskell as the first Republican nominee for governor of Oklahoma. Bitter, he departed for Colorado
for several years, before returning to Oklahoma to be involved with the Cosden Oil Company in Tulsa.
It was one of those magical moments in which time is suspended. Two men said two
sentences and neither was to be the same again.
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was in the middle of his “crowded hour.” As the Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, he had placed many of the events in motion that would lead to
the Spanish-American War.
When that war seemed inevitable he sought a way to serve and to demonstrate that
he, the sickly boy aristocrat, could be proved courageous. He resigned his prestigious
Washington desk job (Assistant Secretary of the Navy) and went about the American
territories of Indian, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona recruiting cowboys and farm
boys to become part of a regiment nicknamed the “Rough Riders.”
One of his top recruits was Bucky O’Neil of Prescott, Arizona Territory, a man that
knew no fear. O’Neil brought a number of men with him. Frank Frantz was named
his First Lieutenant.
Born in May, 1872, Frantz had been raised in Roanoke, IL and attended Eureka College
(Eureka, IL) for two years before moving with his family to Wellington, KS and then
to Medford with the opening of the Cherokee Strip run of 1893. By 1898 he was in
the mining business in Prescott and was as excited as the next young man to feel the
allure of potential battle.
In the midst of the first battle for the San Juan Hills, Colonel Roosevelt galloped over
to where the Arizona Territories’ Troop A had gathered. Not seeing O’Neil, Roosevelt
addressed Lt. Frantz: “Where is your Captain” “He is dead,” he replied. According to
legend Roosevelt then asked, “Where are you going” Frantz excitedly replied, “I’m
going to the top of the hill!”
Whereupon, with the colors of Troop A in his left hand and a sword in his right,
Frantz shouted, “charge” and through a hail of bullets up the hill Frantz and Troop
A advanced. It was amidst many a dead and mangled Spanish soldier’s that Frantz
planted the Troop A colors at the Spanish blockhouse at the top to the hill. (Anderson,
128; numerous accounts.)
Roosevelt, awed at Frantz’ bravery named him “Captain” and placed his name in for
the Silver Star (which he did not receive until 1935).
That “crowded hour” changed both men’s lives forever and made them inextricably
linked. That moment changed the history of a state yet to be born.
Later in 1898 Roosevelt was to be elected Governor of New York, in 1900 to the Vice
Presidency of the United States, and at the age of 43 became the youngest President
of the United States in 1901 when President William McKinley was assassinated.
Meanwhile Frank Frantz moved to Enid, Oklahoma to enter business with his
brothers. It was there he met and was married in April 1901 to Miss Matilda Evans
at the First Presbyterian Church. The local paper, the Enid Wave, declared that Miss
Evans “springs from one of the best families of Missouri, well bred and well connected in
every particular as the life, habits and sociability of herself and brothers in this city fully
13
testifies. She is an accomplished, educated lady in every sense of the word.” Speaking
of her new husband, the Wave editorialized “Mrs. Frantz was fortunate indeed in
capturing a husband of the highest type of manhood and American chivalry.” They
were to have five children: Frank Jr., Louise, James (who died infancy), Matilda, and
Virginia.
Frantz maintained close contact with Roosevelt. TR was interested in the athletic
skills of all the Frantz brothers. TR recruited brothers Orville (later to be known as
“Home Run Frantz”) and Montgomery (“Preacher Frantz” because he wouldn’t pitch
on Sundays) to attend Harvard University, TR’s alma mater (T. Roosevelt letters in
Frantz Collection.)
In 1902, TR had a chance to help Frank directly by appointing him the Postmaster of
Enid. Two years later TR called again, this time asking the former Rough Rider to be
the Osage Nation Indian agent.
The job was a delicate one. First oil had been discovered on Osage land as early as
1896 and the lease would need to be renewed in 1906. TR wanted someone he
trusted to help advance the best interests of both the full and mixed blood Osage
(See Gregory).
Secondly, TR desired to have a new state during his presidency. He felt the most
obvious candidate was a combination of Indian and Oklahoma Territories. But that
meant all of the property of the Indian tribes needed to be transferred from tribal to
individual ownership through allotment. This needed to be accomplished by 1906
among those of the Osage Nation.
“I suppose you are acquainted with my young
friend down there (Enid, OK), Captain Frank
Frantz I first met him at the Battle of San
Juan Hill; he was leading his company in that
fight; he seemed but a boy. I rode up to him
and asked: ‘Where is your Captain’ ‘He is
dead,’ he replied. ‘Where are you going’ I
asked. ‘I’m going to the top of that hill.’”
- Theodore Roosevelt
Finally, TR was concerned about the white graft that was omnipresent among the
white towns that had sprung up around the borders of the Osage Nation. Whites
were getting rich by cheating the oil rich Osage via illegal documents, gambling,
alcohol, and prostitution. This problem needed resolution. (See Lloyd; Anderson,
page 130.)

Oklahoma, born sixteen years ago
in homeless hardship, cradled in
swaddling clothes of poverty, educated
by experience of much adversity, and
developed through abundant promise,
stands today full grown and asking for
her dower. - Inaugural Address as Territorial
outnumbered Republicans. The constitution was somewhat discriminatory towards
both blacks and Native Americans, which Frantz warned would not be tolerated by
President Roosevelt if adopted. Oklahoma becoming a “Jim Crow” state (separate but
equal) was much debated; but eventually these words were stricken. (Jones 384,
386; Anderson, 140.)
In August 1907 Frantz was nominated by the Republican Party to be their first
nominee for Governor (Jones, p. 388). However, the party made the mistake of
opposing the new constitution. This proved to be an unpopular move, of course,
because constitutional defeat would cause a delay in statehood.
Governor, January 1906.
Frantz no more had begun to grapple with all these issues when in late 1905 he
was summoned to Washington, DC to become the last governor of Oklahoma
Territory. It would be a daunting task. Not only had TR decided to combine Indian
and Oklahoma Territory into one state, he wanted that state to be controlled by the
Republican Party. Frantz was to be TR’s man in Guthrie to bring about statehood and
to eventually lead the Republicans into the state’s new governor’s chair.
Frantz was inaugurated as Oklahoma Territorial Governor at Guthrie in January 1906
(Anderson, 133) and TR sent the Oklahoma Enabling Act through Congress. The
process of statehood was in motion.
Two items, however, in the Enabling Act were to work against each other in
accomplishing TR’s goal of having a Republican State, and his friend Frantz from
becoming the first state governor.
The first factor was the requirement that the Oklahoma Territorial government’s
legislative body would be disbanded, leaving the entire administration of Oklahoma
Territory in the hands of Frantz (Jones, 379).
Frantz, along with his attorney general W. O. Cromwell, took on the enormous
responsibility with vigor probably unrivaled in Oklahoma’s young history. He
challenged the railroads, claiming they were charging too much money for the
merchants of Oklahoma, and won. (Anderson, 135.)
He fought for not only the land rights to certain farms set aside for schools but the
mineral rights as well. “Armies” of deputies fanned throughout Oklahoma Territory
(especially the Panhandle) to claim sections of lands in the name of the Territory.
(Jones, 379-381, Anderson 135)
Monies earned from the lease of this land and mineral rights were to be set aside for
education in Oklahoma Territory. Frantz’ efforts formed the basis of many billions of
dollars for education over the 100 year history of the eventual state of Oklahoma.
The second factor emulating from the Oklahoma Enabling Act was the call for a
constitutional convention, nicknamed the “Con Con.” A constitution was necessary for
statehood and Frantz represented the Republicans in drawing the Oklahoma Territory
boundary lines for convention delegates. The Democrats cried foul, but elected 99
out of 112 delegates between the combined two territories and the Osage Nation.
(See Murray; Anderson, 139.)
Meanwhile, Charles Haskell was running as the Democratic nominee against Frantz.
Frantz issued a proclamation setting the date of the first election on September 17,
1907, thus complying with the requirements of the Enabling Act.
Frantz campaigned as best he could under the banner of education, and spent most
of his time in Indian Territory where he was not well known.
He urged President Roosevelt to come to Oklahoma to help in the campaign, as
he felt the Democratic momentum and believed only TR could save Oklahoma for
the Republican column. Several times Roosevelt declined Frantz’ urgent requests,
instead sending Secretary of State William Howard Taft to rally the wayward troops.
On August 24, Taft criticized the constitution and urged the election of Frantz. The
Democrats countered with William Jennings Bryan, who drew enormous crowds.
(Jones 390)
Frantz was exonerated (by President Roosevelt) of corruption and drunkenness
during his tenure at the Osage Nation Indian Agency, but the verdict arrived too
late in the gubernatorial campaign. The Republicans were further handicapped by
political infighting over the constitution.
On election night, September 17th, Charles Haskell and the entire Democratic ticket
were elected by pluralities ranging from 23,000 to 30,000. For Governor, Haskell
garnered 134,162 votes to Frantz’ 106,507. Both branches of the legislature were
overwhelmingly Democratic. (Jones, 392)
Despite Republican opposition, the Constitution was adopted
180,333 to 73,059, and prohibition carried 130,361 to 112,258. Frantz took the
official canvas to Washington, DC and TR issued his proclamation that Oklahoma
would become a state on November 16.
Totally embittered by the acrimony of the campaign, Frantz refused to be involved
with Oklahoma’s first gubernatorial inauguration (Murray Vol. II, page 108). He
entered the oil business in Denver and eventually returned to Tulsa, OK to conduct
land acquisitions for the Cosden Oil Company (See Gregory). He died in 1941.
Had it not been for that brief “crowded hour” in the steamy hot hills of Cuba, history
would have been changed dramatically. Had a bullet struck the body of Theodore
Roosevelt, the land that eventually made up the current state of Oklahoma would
have been governmentally and possibly territorially altered. Frank Frantz would have
probably become a successful businessman working alongside his brothers in Enid, OK.
Had a bullet killed Frank Frantz, a monument may have been erected in his honor. He
survived the charge up the hill, however, and what resulted was a lasting friendship
with the President who wanted his own state…Oklahoma.
Bibliography:
Primary Sources:
Frank Frantz Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.
Frantz, Frank: Report of Agent for Osage Agency. U. S. Office of Indian Affairs, Part I,
Report of the Commissioner, Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for
the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1905. Government Printing Office, 1906. Pages
United States Department of the Interior, “Reports of the Governor of Oklahoma
for 1907. Administrative Reports for the Year Ending June 30, 1907, (2 vols.,
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), Vol. II, pp. 685-687.
Secondary Sources:
By your actions today you have sounded
a warning to the ‘little boss’ (Democratic
nominee Charles Haskell) whom the
Republicans shall banish to a political
island of St. Helena, where he will pace his
measured beat, listening to the mourning
waves singing a requiem to the dead hopes
of Muskogee’s gifted son. - Acceptance
Address for Republican Nomination for Oklahoma
Governor, August 1907.
Governor Frank Frantz of Oklahoma. Sturm’s Statehood Magazine, February 1906,
Vol. 1, No. 6.
Gregory, Robert. Oil in Oklahoma, Leak Industries, Muskogee, OK, 1976.
Hurst, Irvin. The 46th Star. Western Heritage Books, Inc., Oklahoma City, 1980.
Jones, Stephen. Captain Frank Frantz, The Rough Rider Governor of Oklahoma
Territory, The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. XLIII, No. 4 (Winter 1965-1966), p. 374.
Jones, Stephen. Oklahoma Politics: In State and Nation Volume 1, 1907-1962.
Haymaker Press, Enid, 1974.
Lloyd, Roger Hall, Osage County: A Tribe and American Culture 1600-1934.
iUniverse, New York, 2006, pp 417-454.
Morris, John W., Charles R. Goins, and Edwin C. McReynolds. Historical Atlas of
Oklahoma, Second Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, 1976.
Murray, William H. Memoirs of Governor Murray and True History of Oklahoma.
Meador Publishing Company, Boston, 1945.
The Democrats had become organized through the 1905 Sequoyah Convention,
named in honor of the great Cherokee leader and teacher. It had been a failed
attempt to make Indian Territory into a separate state, but resulted in organizing the
Democrats into a formidable political force (see Murray; Hurst pp. 1-15.)
The Constitutional Convention, controlled by chairman Alfalfa Bill Murray, created
a lengthy, radical and populist constitution that was opposed by the vastly
Anderson, Ken, “Frank Frantz: Governor of Oklahoma Territory, 1906-1907” in Fischer,
Leroy H. (ed). Oklahoma’s Governors 1890-1907: Territorial Years. Oklahoma
Historical Society, 1975, pp. 128-144.
Baird, W. David, and Danny Goble. The Story of Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma
Press, 1994, pp. 306-312.
Gibson, Arrell Morgan. The History of Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press, 1984.
Scales, James R. and Danny Goble. Oklahoma Politics: A History, University of
Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Wilson, Terry P. The Underground Reservation: Osage Oil. University of Nebraska
Press, 1985.
15

“Not Quite Known”:
Lynn Riggs (1899-1954)
By John D. Anderson
Lynn Riggs
Lynn Riggs (1899-1954) is best known as the author of the 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs, the basis for the
Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! Born near Claremore in Indian Territory of part-Cherokee ancestry,
he wrote 21 full-length plays as well as poetry, screenplays, and fiction.
Playwright Lynn Riggs earned a permanent if obscure place in theatre—and
Oklahoma—history by writing Green Grow the Lilacs, the play that became the basis
for the classic musical Oklahoma! Yet, Riggs was once ranked with Eugene O’Neill as
the equal of any European dramatist. Influential drama critic and editor Barrett Clark
championed Riggs’s work in these terms and published many of his 30 plays, several
of which were produced on Broadway. Ultimately, though, Riggs’s name has become
largely forgotten. His early fame faded in part because he rebelled against the narrow
confines of commercial theatre to insist on the integrity of his tragic, poetic vision of
drama. He succeeded, though, in creating a vivid and significant body of work—true
not only to his personal vision, but faithful also to his regional roots and to the
turbulent historical period when Indian Territory was transitioning into the “brand
new state” of Oklahoma.
Rollie Lynn Riggs was born in 1899 near Claremore in what was then Indian Territory.
His mother, Rose Ella Duncan Gillis Riggs, was one-eighth Cherokee; she was thus
entitled to an allotment of 160 acres under federal legislation intended to make
Native Americans assimilate by shifting ownership of tribal lands to individuals.
Rose Ella Riggs died in 1901, and her two-year-old son Lynn and his older sister and
brother inherited shares of the allotted land. Six months later, their father, William
Grant Riggs, a rancher, married his second wife, Juliette Scrimsher Chambers, who
was one quarter Cherokee. A harsh stepmother, Juliette Riggs served as the model
for various cruel women in Riggs’s plays, but her malign influence was balanced in
young Lynn’s life by his warm-hearted Aunt Mary Brice and her six daughters. Riggs
was later to immortalize his father’s sister as Aunt Eller and one of her daughters as
Laurey in Green Grow the Lilacs.
In 1928, shortly before embarking for Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship—the
first Oklahoman to be so honored—Riggs reluctantly wrote an autobiographical
sketch for Barrett Clark. He recalled summers riding on horseback and herding
cattle with his father and brother, as well as working in a glass factory in Sapulpa.
For entertainment, there had been “play-parties” and box suppers, like at Old Man
Peck’s in Green Grow the Lilacs, and for creative expression, Friday night “speakings”
and singing at the local movie house. In 1917, upon graduating from the Oklahoma
Military Academy, he rode as a cowpuncher on a cattle train to spend a few months
in Chicago before moving on to New York, where his various jobs included working as
an extra in cowboy movies. Illness brought him back to Oklahoma in 1919; when he
recovered, he became a reporter for the Oil and Gas Journal in Tulsa.
During that summer of 1919, he noted tersely in his autobiographical statement for
Clark, “Read all the modern poetry, and wrote my first poems. Reams and reams.
Very bad. I went on to Los Angeles, played extra in many movies with the older stars,”
such as Rudolph Valentino. “Read proof for the Los Angeles Times and nearly ruined
my eyes” (Braunlich 63-64). He was to suffer from eyestrain his whole life and wore
noticeably thick-lensed eyeglasses. Riggs happened to be working late one night in
1920 at the Times when angry former employees exploded a bomb, killing several
people. Riggs wrote up the story and sold it for $300, enabling him to return home
and start college.
In the fall of 1920, Riggs entered the University of Oklahoma and threw himself
into musical, dramatic, and literary activities, including publishing poems in H. L.
Mencken’s fashionable magazine Smart Set. When poet Witter Bynner lectured at
the university in 1922, he became an important friend and mentor to Riggs. That
summer, Riggs toured widely on the Chautauqua circuit as second tenor in the Sooner
Quartet, meeting Willa Cather in Nebraska. In 1923, through Bynner’s influence,
Harriet Monroe devoted an entire issue of Poetry magazine to Riggs’s poetry.
Then, as he wrote in his autobiographical sketch for Clark: “1923—November.
Complete nervous collapse. Various reasons. Went to Santa Fe and worked on a ranch.
Recovered” (Braunlich 64). Santa Fe was where Witter Bynner had settled in 1922.
Bynner biographer James Kraft writes that Riggs became Bynner’s lover for a time
in New Mexico (50), and Riggs biographer Phyllis Cole Braunlich concludes: “Newly
freed by the recognition of his own homosexual orientation, [Riggs] nevertheless was
constantly wary of Oklahoma’s judgments, and never quite so full of self-esteem as
[the openly homosexual] Bynner was” (13).
Riggs became part of the avant-garde arts community in Santa Fe, which included
Ida Rauh Eastman, a founder of the Provincetown Players, with which Eugene O’Neill
was associated. In 1925, Eastman produced Riggs’s one-act play Knives from Syria in
Santa Fe. The title refers to a Syrian peddler who sold exotic goods to Oklahoma farm
women—-a figure that recurs in Green Grow the Lilacs.
“It must be fairly obvious from reading or seeing
[Green Grow the Lilacs] that it might have been
subtitled An Old Song. The intent has been solely
to recapture in a kind of nostalgic glow (but in
dramatic dialogue more than in song) the great
range of mood which characterized the old folk
songs and ballads I used to hear in my Oklahoma
childhood—their quaintness, their sadness, their
robustness, their simplicity, their hearty or bawdy
humors, their sentimentalities, their melodrama,
their touching sweetness.” - Lynn Riggs, “The Author’s
Preface,” Green Grown the Lilacs. In The Cherokee Night and
Other Plays. Norman: U of OK P, 2003, p. 4.
Ambitious to succeed as a playwright, Riggs headed to Chicago to teach while writing
the violent tragedy Big Lake, which, in 1927, became his first play produced in New
York (with Stella Adler in the cast). When he successfully applied for the Guggenheim
Fellowship in 1928, he had written five plays and had had three of them published.
In the south of France on his fellowship, his thoughts turned to “a more golden day
in Oklahoma” than “the parsimonious and desert days that came to birth in my early
childhood,” as he wrote to his former OU professor Walter Campbell (Braunlich 82).
In a report to the Guggenheim Foundation, Riggs described the play he was writing
17

as his most ambitious, “about a vanished era . . . when people were easier, warmer,
happier in the environment they had created. Song flourished. . . . Even the speech
of the people, backwoods though it was, was rich, flavorous, lustrous, and wise”
(Braunlich 77). This “folk play in Six Scenes, with Songs and Ballads of the period”
was Green Grow the Lilacs, which was set in Indian Territory in 1900. The Theatre
Guild produced it to mostly favorable reviews on Broadway in 1931 with Franchot
Tone as Curly, Lee Strasberg as the peddler, and Tex Ritter singing some of the
cowboy songs. The production enjoyed a respectable run of 64 performances and
then toured seven cities.
Native American studies scholar Jace Weaver speculates that the character Curly
McClain in Green Grow the Lilacs is an Indian cowboy. Also, Weaver posits that the
tension in the play between the “farmer and the cowman” (in Hammerstein’s lyric for
the musical version) is based in racial conflict between Amer-European farmers and
Native American cattlemen (Weaver 99). Albert Borowitz, on the other hand, argues
that Jeeter Fry, the villainous handyman in the play (renamed Jud Fry by Rodgers
and Hammerstein) is Native American. More and more, in recent years, scholars have
begun to explore the Native American presence in Riggs’s work.
While in France, Riggs had also begun writing his most explicit treatment of Native
American themes in an episodic, expressionistic work called The Cherokee Night. The
play is concerned with “that night, that darkness (with whatever flashes of light
allowably splinter through) which has come to the Cherokees and their descendants,”
“The fact is that far from idealizing the poetic
quality of that speech [in Green Grow the Lilacs], I
haven’t equaled it. I have an aunt . . . who naturally
speaks a much more highly charged poetic
language than I can contrive to write . . . And this
was generally true of the Oklahoma folk of thirty
years ago, whom I have written about. These
people talked poetry without any conscious effort
to make beautiful language . . . “
- Lynn Riggs, The New York Evening Post, 24 January 1931
Source: Erhard, Thomas. Lynn Riggs: Southwest Playwright.
Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn, 1970.
as he explained to Barrett Clark in a letter. “It seems to me the best grade of absorbed
Indian might be an intellectual Hamlet, buffeted, harassed, victimized, split,
baffled—with somewhere in him great fire and some granite. And a residual lump of
stranger things than the white race may fathom” (Braunlich 80). The Cherokee Night
was Riggs’s favorite among his plays.
Lynn Riggs went on to write a total of 21 full-length plays. Thirteen of them were
published, and almost all were produced. Riggs also wrote and published a number
of one-act plays and two collections of poems, as well as an unfinished novel called
The Affair at Easter (based on the murder of one of Riggs’s cousins by the man’s wife).
Riggs’s most significant plays, in addition to Green Grow the Lilacs and The Cherokee
Night, include Roadside (1930), Russet Mantle (1936), and Out of Dust (1948).
Roadside (known in other forms as Reckless and Borned in Texas) is a raucous,
high-spirited comedy set in Indian Territory in 1905, adapted as a musical by Harvey
Schmidt and Tom Jones, creators of The Fantasticks. The hero, named Texas, is a
braggart cowboy whose Paul Bunyan-like character contains elements of frontier
humor and tall tales. Russet Mantle, a more satiric romantic comedy, is set in 1930s
Santa Fe and presents a young couple rebelling against conventionality. Out of Dust
is a family drama set on the Shawnee Cattle Trail in the early 1880s, enacting a tragic
story of sibling rivalry and patricide.
In 1930, while he was waiting for the Theatre Guild to produce Green Grow the Lilacs,
Riggs went to California to write screenplays for six weeks. He continued throughout
the 1930s to commute between Santa Fe and New York to Hollywood, earning screen
credits on films such as Stingaree (1934) with Irene Dunne, The Garden of Allah (1936)
with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, and The Plainsman (1936) with Gary Cooper
and Jean Arthur. In Hollywood, Riggs became close friends with such stars as Bette
Davis and Joan Crawford. In 1934, Crawford gave Riggs a Scottie puppy he named The
Baron, and Riggs was present at Crawford’s wedding in 1935 to Franchot Tone, the
original Curly in Green Grow the Lilacs.
Frustrated with the compromises that commercial theatre demanded, Riggs
turned more and more to regional theatres to produce his plays. He aspired—
unsuccessfully—to create a visionary art theatre called the Vine in collaboration
with directors Mary Hunter and Andrius Jilinsky, playwright Paul Green, and Enrique
Gasque-Molina (who adopted the pseudonym Ramon Naya), a Mexican artist and
playwright with whom Riggs lived in Santa Fe in the late 1930s.
In the fall semester of 1941, Riggs taught at Baylor University in Waco, Texas,
before being drafted into the military in 1942 to work on training films. On March
31, 1943, Technician Third-Class Riggs attended opening night of Richard Rodgers
and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! The smash success of the musical made Riggs
financially comfortable and enabled him to buy a house on Shelter Island in New
York. His companion for several years in the late 1940s was the dancer Gui Machado.
Continuing to write prolifically despite recurring illnesses in the early 1950s, Lynn
Riggs died of cancer on June 30, 1954.
Bibliography: Primary Sources by Lynn Riggs
Big Lake: A Tragedy in Two Parts. New York: Samuel French, 1925.
This Book, This Hill, These People: Poems by Lynn Riggs. Ed. Phyllis Cole Braunlich.
Tulsa: Lynn Chase Publishing, 1982.
The Cherokee Night and Other Plays. Norman: U of OK P, 2003. (Includes Green Grow
the Lilacs and Out of Dust.)
Cowboy Songs, Folk Songs, and Ballads from Green Grow the Lilacs. New York:
Samuel French, 1932.
Four Plays. New York: Samuel French, 1947. (Includes The Year of Pilar, The Cream in
the Well, Dark Encounter, A World Elsewhere.)
Hang on to Love: A Play in Two Acts. New York: Samuel French, 1948.
The Iron Dish: Poems. New York: Doubleday-Doran, 1930.
Roadside: A Comedy. New York: Samuel French, 1930.
Russet Mantle and The Cherokee Night: Two Plays. New York: Samuel French, 1936.
Sump’n Like Wings and A Lantern to See By: Two Oklahoma Plays. New York: Samuel
French, 1928.
Secondary Sources
Borowitz, Albert. “’Pore Jud is Daid’: Violence and Lawlessness in the Plays of Lynn
Riggs.” Legal Studies Forum 27:1 (2003): 157-184.
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/borowitz27porejud.htm
Braunlich, Phyllis Cole. “The Cherokee Night of R. Lynn Riggs.” Midwest Quarterly 30
(Autumn 1988): 45-59.
----------. Haunted by Home: The Life and Letters of Lynn Riggs. Norman: U of OK P, 1988.
----------. “The Oklahoma Plays of R. Lynn Riggs.” World Literature Today 64 (Summer
1990): 390-94.
Erhard, Thomas. Lynn Riggs: Southwest Playwright. Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn, 1970.
Justice, Daniel Heath. Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History.
Minneapolis: U of MN P, 2006.
Kraft, James. Who Is Witter Bynner A Biography. Albuquerque: U of NM P, 1995.
Little Thunder, Julie. “Mixedbloods and Bloodlust in Cherokee Night.” Midwest
Quarterly 43 (Summer 2002): 355-65.
Rodgers, Richard, and Oscar Hammerstein, II. Oklahoma! Based on Lynn Riggs’
Green Grow the Lilacs. NY: Random House, 1943.
Sanford, John. A Very Good Land to Fall With. Scenes from the Life of an American Jew.
Vol. 3. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow, 1987.
Weaver, Jace. That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native
American Community. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
Wilk, Max. OK! The Story of Oklahoma! New York: Grove P, 1993.
Womack, Craig S. “Lynn Riggs as Code Talker: Toward a Queer Oklahomo Theory and
the Radicalization of Native American Studies.” Red on Red: Native
American Literary Separatism. Minneapolis: U of MN P, 1999. Pp. 271-303.
----------. Rev. of The Cherokee Night and Other Plays. Studies in American Indian
Literatures 17.1 (2005): 114-21.
“Write as one writes to a beloved.
With precision, truth, rapture,
with the essence, effluvium of
the self—knowing the audience,
knowing it will be appreciated,
responded to, understood, loved.”
- Lynn Riggs, Journal, 23 May 1952
Source: Lynn Riggs Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University,
New Haven, CT.
19

Will Rogers:
Oklahoma in the Mirror
By Doug Watson
It was never Clem Rogers’ plan for his son to become a rope-spinning star of stage
and screen, and he didn’t live to see him become America’s most-sought-after
voice of the common man, or a humorous critic of Congress, or a friend of America’s
political and business leaders, or one of the movie industry’s highest paid stars.
Clem hoped that young “Willie” would get an education and assume a role in
the political development of Oklahoma—a soon-to-be state that included the
Cherokee nation where Clem himself had earned wealth and respect.
Will Rogers’ fame and success reached far beyond the boundaries of Oklahoma, but
he never forgot his roots in Indian Territory. After 1906, his mailing addresses were
in New York and California—never in Oklahoma—but frequent visits to his family
and frequent comments about events and accomplishments “back home” proved
that his eyes and a part of his heart were always set on Oklahoma.
Despite projecting an image of “aw shucks” indifference to the rush of events
around him—he said he usually fell asleep while reading the paper—Will was
profoundly restless. As a child, he seemed unable to concentrate on schoolwork
and was often the most disruptive pupil in his class, frequently showing off for
classmates or playing jokes on his friends. When he “quit school for good” before
earning a high school diploma, he ran away to Texas and a ranch job he thought
would be an escape from his father’s oversight. Past twenty, he deserted Clem’s
gift of work for himself on his own ranch to seek a mythic South American frontier
described in popular magazines.
He had tried to urge his son to give up the uncertainty of “fame” for the security of
home. Will supposedly replied that “I may be just an ol’ country boy in the city,
but I’m eatin’ pretty regular,” and he sometimes sent Clem money, too, mostly to
demonstrate that he could. When Clem saw the theater where Will performed,
he was finally impressed; he assessed the situation with his banker’s mind; and
when he returned to Claremore, he confided to his daughter that, given the
number of seats and the price of tickets, “they must make an awful lot of money
out of Willie” (Yagoda).
Considering Will Rogers’ public stature at the end of his life, one might suppose
that he had outgrown Oklahoma, left it behind for national fame and international
recognition. Not so. He boasted publicly about being from Oologah, or from
Claremore (“people in California can’t say ‘Oologah,’” he joked), and he embraced
his Indian heritage, too, in spite of widespread prejudice. He stopped over in
Oklahoma when he traveled across the country by train, often to visit family and
friends. He saluted Tulsa when it built an airport, Waynoka, when it became
a stopover for cross-country air travel. He piloted the Claremore Queen in
“Steamboat Round the Bend,” struck oil near Claremore as Pike Peters in “They
Had to See Paris.” He followed Oklahoma politics, from the embarrassments of
gubernatorial impeachments and “Alfalfa” Bill Murray’s feud with Texas over the
Red River boundary to the economic hardships brought on by drought and dust—
and he spent weeks crossing the state to raise money to aid suffering Oklahoma
farmers. He was generous toward his family, and he valued his Oklahoma friends.
Will Rogers
Will Rogers was born on a ranch in Indian Territory in 1879. His parents were both part Cherokee. After attending several schools in
the Territory and in Missouri, Will did ranch work before beginning a life in show business—wild west shows, vaudeville, the stage,
movies, personal appearance tours, radio, and newspapers. He was a friend of the common man and of many powerful businessmen,
politicians, and government officials. His nearly twenty-seven-year marriage to Betty Blake produced three children who grew to
adulthood. During his show business life, the Rogers family lived in New York and California, and Will traveled often around the U.S.
and the world. From the obscurity of caring for cattle in Indian Territory, he rose to the zenith of public attention and to considerable
wealth—his written words syndicated in six hundred papers, his movies the most popular of their age, his voice and image familiar to
tens of millions of Americans. His death by airplane crash in August 1935 set off a season of national mourning, but he lives on still in
words that reflect his humor and common wisdom and that embody some of the universal hopes of human beings.
Will’s restlessness found its complement in show business, where he began as a
rope-spinner, added comic gags and a shy stage presence, and eventually seemed
to dominate every medium he engaged—stage, screen, radio, newspapers, and
personal appearance—always traveling, around the U.S. or around the world. Yet,
in the midst of his great success, he remained remarkably grounded in common
sense and simple reason. His language was simple, his words short, and his
metaphors folksy and comfortable. He always seem ed to be going somewhere
or coming back, having just spent the afternoon at Edison’s birthday party or
visiting with Mussolini or having supper with Calvin Coolidge or flying with Charles
Lindbergh or playing polo with movie star friends or lunching with senators in the
capitol dining room.
Will’s anchor—and he readily confessed it—was his wife, Betty, whom he dubbed
“Blake” for her maiden name. “She runs this outfit,” he said repeatedly of his
business interests and his family. Will met her in Oologah before 1900. It took him
until 1908 to convince her to marry him, but he understood from the start that “the
best roping performance of my life was the day I roped Betty.” Like Clem, she had
hoped to keep Will in Oklahoma, where success seemed almost ready-made, but
when his show business success demanded another life, she made the best of it.
In 1910, Clem traveled from Oklahoma to Washington, D. C., to visit Will and Betty.
21
“Live your life so that
whenever you lose, you
are ahead.” - Will Rogers
“It’s a great country but
you can’t live in it for
nothing.” - Will Rogers
Perhaps Clem was right. If Will had stayed home, he could have had a base on
which to build a good life. The Rogers family was never poor. Even after the
Dawes Act rearranged the nature of Indian land claims and access, Clem played an

influential role among his fellow Cherokees and owned enough land to provide
an only son an enviable inheritance. Clem’s economic and political achievements
were considerable, and his friends were powerful. Among them were 101 Ranch
owner Zack Mulhall, rancher Ewing Halsell, businessman-politician and would-be
governor Frank Franz, and Bill Murray, elected governor in the early 1930s. Will’s
education, though somewhat irregular, need not have been a serious deterrent to
his success in Oklahoma, either.
But Will’s connections to the state were not primarily politics or money; they were
his family, his friends, his interests, and his “common” words and ways. His sisters
Sallie and Maud and their families provided Will an Oklahoma family; he stopped
over whenever he traveled across the country and enjoyed visits, good food, and
chances to give back from his financial successes—sometimes ice cream for all the
kids, once a new car for each of the nieces and nephews. Recently, a Washington
columnist pointed out that Will’s own newspaper words were almost always
simple, one or two syllables (Haught), and this seems to reflect his connection to
the “common” folk of Oklahoma, many of them poor overalls-clad farm folks who
never had much and lost most of that in the hard times of drought, dust bowl
and depression. In response to this hardship, Will mounted a drought relief tour
in 1931. Over twenty-two days, he appeared in fifty-four venues in Oklahoma,
Arkansas, and Texas and raised nearly a quarter-million dollars, most of it donated
to needy farm families (Gragert).
Will’s Oklahoma friends included the Phillips brothers, and he visited in their
homes from time to time in Tulsa and Bartlesville. He admired Waite’s Tulsa home;
he also visited his New Mexico ranch and praised his plan to transform it into a Boy
Scout retreat. Will was not out of place among oil’s wealthy—the Phillips boys, or
E. W. Marland, or Henry Sinclair, or even John D. Rockefeller. Perhaps he had no oil
holdings of his own, but he knew wealth, and he knew too that these were only
ordinary men who had been lucky beyond any rational explanation and perhaps
exploitative beyond common fairness and sense.
In general and in some specifics, I have leaned here on the work of two important
Will Rogers scholars—biographer Ben Yagoda, whose Will Rogers: A Biography
(Oklahoma) remains by far the best of many “lives” of the humorist, and editor Steven
Gragert, whose work on many volumes of the Rogers’ collected writings (Oklahoma
State) and on the two most recent volumes of The Papers of Will Rogers (Oklahoma)
sets a high standard for any serious student. I have also mentioned a comment
by one of many Rogers enthusiasts, columnist Robert Haught; such followers have
kept Will’s words and ideas before the public in many ways, as in the many books of
quotes and quips.
Some Will Rogers sources:
The collected writings of Will Rogers appear in twenty-two volumes published by
the Oklahoma State University Press during the 1970s.
The Papers of Will Rogers appear in five volumes published by the University of
Oklahoma Press between 1996 and 2006. The first three volumes were edited
by Arthur Wertheimer, the two more recent ones by Steven Gragert and M. Jane
Johansson.
The best of several biographies is Ben Yagoda’s Will Rogers: A Biography
published originally by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993 and by the University of Oklahoma
Press in 2000.
Popular collections of Will Rogers’ quotes include several by Bryan and Francis
Sterling and others by Joe Carter, Reba Collins, and Ed Ayers.
A limited number of Rogers films have been available in recent years in VHS format
from the Will Rogers Memorial gift shop; in 2006, Twentieth Century Fox publicly
released eight of the twenty-one “talkies” in a remastered DVD format.
“I don’t think I ever hurt any
man’s feelings by my little
gags. I know I never willfully
did it. When I have to do
that to make a living I will
quit.” - Will Rogers
There’s little evidence that Will ever knew the young woman who was one voice
of early Oklahoma’s social conscience and women’s political involvement, Kate
Barnard, but from his Cherokee tradition he knew how to reach out to persons in
need, even if they were not in the social mainstream. In fact, his help for the many
who suffered hardships from natural disaster or economic reversal or prejudice
suggests that he shared some of Barnard’s aims. And like so many political topics,
women’s participation in politics was one of his targets in radio and newspaper
gags, which usually revealed a complexity of thoughts and attitudes in the
humorist.
Despite his involvement with the theater world of New York, there is also no clear
evidence that Will knew the work of fellow Claremorean Lynn Riggs, whose “Green
Grow the Lilacs” might have provided a script for Will to play yet another character
with roots in the early days of Oklahoma, had its timing been just a little different.
But Will Rogers did not need a theater script to tell the story of the state’s rise
from Indian Territory to Oklahoma’s full participation in the affairs of the nation
and the world. It was his own personal story, one that is perhaps still unmatched
in the dimension of his rise from anonymity to national and even international
recognition and acclaim. Will was Oklahoma’s first and perhaps still its greatest
rising star; if he belonged to more than Oklahoma, he is today no less her dearest
favorite son.
“There is no such thing as
an educated man when you
get him off the thing he’s
educated in. . . . We’re all
ignorant, just on different
topics.” - Will Rogers
23

Oklahoma Chautauqua
Altus; May 29-June 2
Western Oklahoma State College
Entertainment at 7:30 p.m. • Presentations at 8:00 p.m.
Workshops held daily at the Altus Public Library
Contributing Sponsors
Altus Best Western Inn
Altus Economic Development
Corporation
Putnam Toyota
Altus Chamber of Commerce
Friends of the Library
Altus Times
First National Bank
First State Bank
National Bank of Commerce
Cable One
KWHW Radio
KEYB Radio
Mission Corporation of Altus, Oklahoma
Special Thanks To
City of Altus
Mayor, City Council, and City
Administrator
Parks and Recreation Department
Street Department
Electric Department
Police Department
Fire Department
City of Hollis
Friends of the Hollis Public Library
Altus Air Force Base
Chautauqua 2007 Host Committee
SAHC Festival of Trees
Contributors and Sponsors
Tishomingo; June 19-23
Sponsors
Tishomingo Motor Sales
BancFirst, Tishomingo
BancFirst, Madill
BancFirst, Ardmore
Landmark Bank, Tishomingo
OG&E, Durant
MSC Foundation, Inc., Tishomingo
American National Bank, Ardmore
Citizens Bank & Trust Company, Ardmore
Sponsoring Organizations
Planning Committee
Lona Barrick
Susan Branch
Karen Cantrell
Norma Chaney
Letha Clark
Melissa Converse
Gary Cook
Diana Drummond
Judy Huston
Ginny McCarthick
Mary Jane Nelson
Dr. William Pennington
Jennifer Powell
Dr. Rick Ray
Donna Roy
Priscilla Washington
Kay Watson
Jack Yates
Enid; June 12-16
Humphrey Heritage Village
507 S. 4th • Enid, Oklahoma
Entertainment at 6:30
Presentations at 7:30
Workshops held Daily at Oakwood Mall.
Chautauqua Council of Enid, Inc.
P.O. Box 10502 • Enid, OK. 73706
Project Director
Louise Milacek
Officers
John Provine, President
Lavonn McKnight, Vice President
Jane Denker, Secretary
Laurel Provine, Treasurer
Board Members
Cindy Allen
Eldon Ames
Peggy Assenzio
Jill Clark
John Cromwell
Cheryl Evans
Colleen Flikeid
Tary Davis-Johnson
Diane Lasky
Ray Lasky
Tim Milacek
Ann Ritchie
Carolyn Semrad
Gene Semrad
Advisory Board
Gary Brown
Bill Harris
Glen McIntyre
Sharon Trojan
David Trojan
Star - Major Sponsors
Enid Convention & Visitors Bureau
Harris Foundation
Northwestern Oklahoma State University
Oklahoma Humanities Council
Sons & Daughters of the Cherokee Strip
United Supermarket
Gold Sponsors
Central National Bank
Chisholm Creek Development
Effie Outhier Family
Greater Enid Arts & Humanities
Integris Bass Baptist Health Center
John & Virginia Groendyke
St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center
The Commons. A United Methodist
Retirement Community
Tinker Federal Credit Union
Silver Sponsors
Great Lakes Carbon
Lippard Auctioneers
Oakwood Mall
Security National Bank
Bronze Sponsors
Amerihost Inn & Suites
Bob & Pat Anderson
John & Susan Bowers
Tom & Jane Denker
Dr. & Mrs. Francisco Dexeus
Tom & Cheryl Evans
Doug & Colleen Flikeid
Johnsons of Enid Chrysler
Dick & Lavonn McKnight
Pope Distributing Co.
John & Laurel Provine
David & Sharon Trojan
Ponca City; June 25-29
Sponsors
ConocoPhillips
City of Ponca City
Marland Estate
Trout Funeral Home
Smith Technologies
Evans & Associates Enterprises, Inc.
RCB/Pioneer Bank
Ponca City Chamber/Tourism
Home National Bank
Ponca City Publishing Co., Inc.
Davis-Moore Auto Group
Glass Trucking
Eastman National Bank
Ponca City Energy
Barbara & Harold Younger
Quality Water
Head Country
Planning Committee
Kathy Adams
Linda Brandt
Karen Brown
Rich Cantillon
Daryl Cox
Wayne Foxworthy
Becky Hatton
Tudy Lockwood
Dave May
John McNeese
Gay Norris
Mona Sage
Marsha Sanders
John Stanley
Leslie Schauvliege

Sponsors
In its 16th continuous year, the Oklahoma Chautauqua is a program of the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa.
Funding is provided in part by a grant from the Oklahoma Humanities Council and the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Major support for this program is provided by the following: The Mervin Bovaird Foundation, Oklahoma State University – Tulsa,
Chesapeake, We the People, Centennial Committee, Williams and the Downtown Double Tree Hotel
ARTS & HUMANITIES COUNCIL OF TULSA