[2] After a long career marked by difficulties (ascribed both to her gender and to the controversial content of some of her books), she was acclaimed as Oklahoma's "greatest historian"[3] and acknowledged as "an authority on Native American history, a visionary, and an historical heroine in her own right.

"[4] Born in Beattie, Kansas, in 1890, Angie Debo moved with her parents, Edward P. and Lina E. in a covered wagon to the Oklahoma Territory when she was nine years old.

She taught history at Enid High School for four years[6] before taking time to study at the University of Chicago, where she earned a master's degree in international relations in 1924.

[8] Despite this early success, Debo said that she found it difficult to obtain a teaching position because most college history departments at the time would not consider hiring a woman.

[11][12] University of Oklahoma Press director Savoie Lottinville later described this book as a "pioneering effort" in Native American history that gave the effect of "seeing events from inside the tribe, rather than from a purely Anglo-American perspective.

Completed in 1936, And Still the Waters Run detailed how, after their forced removal from the southeastern United States, the Five Civilized Tribes were systematically deprived in Indian Territory of the lands and resources granted to them by federal treaty.

[14] In the words of historian Ellen Fitzpatrick, Debo's book "advanced a crushing analysis of the corruption, moral depravity, and criminal activity that underlay white administration and execution of the allotment policy.

[9] The seminal book is now described as a classic and a major influence on writers of Native American history, from Oliver LaFarge to Vine Deloria, Jr. and Larry McMurtry.

Her work was seen as a rebuttal to the Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, presenting a history of westward expansion based not on the ideal of manifest destiny but on the exploitation of the Native Americans.