WEBVTT - The ‘Oklahoma!’ Haze 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:04.439 I can't remember the first time I saw the musical Oklahoma, 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:10.240 and I don't remember not knowing the words to the 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:15.200 opening song. There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:19.640 There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:22.160 is as high as an elephant. 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:25.040 Sigh, and it looks like it's climbing clear up to 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:30.920 the sky. Oh what a beautiful burning, Oh what a 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:38.000 beautiful day. I've got a beautiful feeling. Everything's going my way. 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:49.760 Chokema sostrepho at Amanda Cob Greatham, Chickasha sayah, my name 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:52.959 is Amanda Cob Greatham. I'm a Chickasauce citizen. I am 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.240 a professor of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:01.440 and I am very much from this born and raised 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:03.520 in southern Oklahoma and the Chickasaw Nation. 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:06.760 The song of Amanda's childhood is called Oh What a 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:10.600 Beautiful Morning, and it's the opening number to Richard Rogers 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.600 and Oscar Hammerstein's classic American musical Oklahoma. 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:20.720 An interesting aspect to me of Oklahoma's mythology is the 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:30.760 extent to which it is relatively unquestioned. The whole idea 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.360 of there being a bright golden haze on this meadow. 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:39.160 This is something that is both highlighted but also obscured. 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:43.119 It's a haze you can't necessarily see clearly, so it's 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:47.039 designed to make you feel something, but not necessarily to 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:48.240 be clear about what that is. 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.600 Amanda's writing a book about all this, about the gaps 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:57.360 between myths and the state's actual history. Oklahoma the musical 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:01.280 is front and center. She's calling her book right Golden 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:05.320 Haze Oklahoma, Indian identity in myth and memory. 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:11.000 Public history and memory combined. This is what we collectively 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:19.200 agree our history to be. You have specific stories that 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:22.959 are generally based on some fact, but then they take 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.440 a turn and start to turn into the world of 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:28.360 legend mythology. They work past that. 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:33.320 Amanda argues that one of those stories is Oklahoma, and 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.240 that it's been able to work past fact and history 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:39.720 partly because it's got all the makings of the type 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:43.359 of story that dominates American mythology, of the West. 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:47.000 Of the coming to a new place, overcoming the odds, 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.720 people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, of the building 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:55.000 of something out of nothing, a perceived nothing, a perceived empty, 0:02:55.080 --> 0:03:01.760 vast planes or vast wilderness. It's the getting of the 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:03.480 song Oklahoma itself. 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.840 The massively famous title song of the musical. 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.040 It couldn't be a better time to start in life. 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:14.120 It ain't too early, and it ain't too late, starting. 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:16.360 As a farmer with a brand new wife. 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.919 So living in a brand new state. 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.800 It is a version of the ultimate American story. 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.840 This ultimate American story sits alongside some other big and 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:36.960 pretty romantic ideas about westward expansion in the US, the 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.920 taming of the land, a vision of not just Oklahoma, 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.120 but the American West and the country itself. 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.640 Something sort of idyllic, edenic, if you will, like, here 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:52.720 is this perfect place, this perfect, pure and untouched place, which, 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:53.720 of course it wasn't. 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:11.000 The musical's vision of Oklahoma. This romantic vision is really 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.880 at odds with the histories we've been telling you, the 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.560 forced removal of Native people in the eighteen hundreds, government 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.920 policies that took land so white settlers could get it. 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.080 The musical is set in nineteen oh six, the year 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:28.400 before Oklahoma became a state. In reality, that land was 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:32.960 far from empty, far from an untouched eden. Amanda cob 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:35.320 grief them remembers the first time this all started to 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.640 dawn on her. She was in middle school in the 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.560 audience with the musical she loved being performed for the 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:43.560 state's seventy fifth anniversary. 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.560 And that's when so many different schools, community theaters, production 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:51.279 groups were doing the musical Oklahoma as part of their 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:56.200 celebration year, right, And I remember, you know, seeing it 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.839 again and standing and listening to it and clapping your 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.440 hands and all of those things, and then thinking, why 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:05.000 is it that there are no Indians in this musical? 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:09.479 How is it that this show is just bright white? 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:12.000 How is that possible? 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:15.800 Knowing when and where this takes. 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:24.840 Place, Amanda is still grappling with that question. How musical 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.880 that she has really fond memories of from state celebrations, 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:33.200 school performances, her dad singing it on car trips, could 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:37.240 be obscuring something so much darker. How it could skip 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.600 over a big part of the state's real history. How 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.840 it could make something violent the era of native land 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:49.200 being taken swiftly, brutally, seem warm and fuzzy, bright and golden. 0:05:50.440 --> 0:06:04.479 I'm Alison Errera and this isn't trust. If you haven't 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:08.360 seen Oklahoma the musical, you've probably at least heard of it. 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.960 It dominates imagery of the state. But back before it 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:13.840 was a smashing success. 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.680 Stories of OKI's and the grapes of Wrath dominated the 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:18.120 national narrative about. 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:22.719 Oklahoma the dust Bowl. The depression. Times in Oklahoma were hard, 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:25.000 and people around the country knew that. 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:30.200 And Oki was a dirty word, and all of Oklahoma's 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:34.440 were represented as sad and ignorant and destitute. 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.920 But then in the nineteen forties, the musical Oklahoma came along. 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:44.320 It was so popular and its story, in all of 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:49.000 its golden glow and nostalgia, was far more persistent. 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:53.520 Oklahoma is a story about cowboys and farmers living in 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:57.320 a territory just before statehood. It takes place around the 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.160 turn of the century, when there were deep divine over land. 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:06.920 Things are changing. There is discussion about prairies closing up, 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:10.120 frontiers closing up. There's more offences than there used to be. 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:16.280 There's contentious relations between the cowboy and the farmer, but 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:21.200 that's all the background. The story itself hinges on a romance. 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:25.400 Between Laurie, a farmer's daughter, and Curly, a cowboy. There's 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:29.040 also a sprinkle of violence, but in the end. 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:33.080 It makes you feel good. It's a very heartwarming story 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:38.240 about simple folk in the Southwest in a kind of 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:44.760 pastoral world that is idyllic, as are many pastoral worlds. 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:48.600 This is Tim Carter. He's a musicologist at the University 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:52.360 of North Carolina. His book is called Oklahoma, The Making 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:56.600 of an American Musical. He spent years researching, writing, and 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.160 just thinking about this musical, and Tim says that when 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.360 it hit Broadway, no one really understood how big it 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:03.800 would be. 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:08.440 I think when Rogers and Hammerstein started out, they didn't 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:12.600 think they were going to produce this great success that 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:16.600 was going to have such massive implications both for Broadway 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:23.800 and more broadly. But by some magic, it. 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:29.360 Was enormously and incredibly popular. It had a record number 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:32.959 twy two hundred and twelve performances on Broadway, and. 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.640 It became the longest running musical on Broadway of its time. 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:42.360 It was such a big deal. Tim says some of 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.280 this success was a matter of timing. Oklahoma arrived at 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:47.200 a big moment. 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:52.360 It was performed in nineteen forty three on Broadway, so 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:55.640 a very crucial time, banging in the middle of World 0:08:55.720 --> 0:08:59.400 War Two. So clearly there was a certain amount of 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.440 propaganda there if you like that needed to go on 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:10.160 here about belonging to the land that was grand along 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.559 with and making people realize that there were things worth 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:18.400 fighting for in the middle of World War two, at 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:21.800 a time when the World War wasn't going so well 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:25.760 for the Allies, and it was the job of Broadway 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.000 and of the arts in general to try and make 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:30.280 a contribution to the war effort. 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.240 New York was a big transit point for members of 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:37.240 the Armed Forces before going to Europe. Service members often 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:39.360 got a chance to go to a Yankees game or 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.160 a show. Imagine you're about to ship off overseas and 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:44.880 go fight against Hitler's army. 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:48.640 Goodness knows whether you're going to come back or not, and. 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.160 You find yourself in the heart of Times Square, in 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.000 a seat on Broadway, and. 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:56.720 You hears a group on the stage singing, we know 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:59.600 we belonged to the land, and the land we belonged 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.640 to is At that point it has to be a 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:08.559 powerful memory. It becomes a question of identity and keeping 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.040 that identity in your mind as you're going through the 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:14.120 horrors of warfare. 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.360 And for many the message hit home. 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:20.600 I was talking about Oklahoma once to a retirement community, 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:24.240 and I was doing my usual talk about the staging 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.040 of Oklahoma, the theater guild and so on, and there 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:31.080 was an elderly gentleman in the front row who started crying. 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.200 And I went up to him afterwards and I said, oh, sir, 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:37.360 I hope I didn't upset you or offend you or 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:40.600 anything like that. And he said to me, no, no, no, no, no. 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:44.640 I was crying because I was there. And I said, 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:46.800 what do you mean I was there? He said, I 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.120 was there in nineteen forty three when I was in 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:54.080 transit to go to Europe to fight at the front, 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:57.280 and I was one of those people who actually heard 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.920 and saw Oklahoma. And at that point I thought, oh, 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:06.120 my goodness, it was a very powerful memory on his part, 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:07.760 very powerful memory. 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:17.200 Following World War Two, the musical only became more ingrained 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:18.600 into American identity. 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.960 It traveled all over the world as part of America's 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:26.239 post World War two Cold War cultural efforts, and year. 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:30.240 After year, decade after decade, it seeped into American culture. 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:33.000 It's been performed on the big screen where. 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:35.600 The wind comes sweeping down the plane. 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:47.160 High schools, in community theaters, grade schools, choirs and back 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:51.640 on Broadway. Amanda says it told a story that many 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:53.719 Americans wanted to believe in. 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:58.400 It was really easy to use as a tool to 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:03.360 make people feel good about being Americans right, and good 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:08.640 about the stories of our origin of frontier history on 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.240 the prairie. But that's not actually what would have been 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:12.760 happening in history at that moment. 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.520 So let's go back to what was actually happening here before. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.280 It was the state of Oklahoma, when this land was 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:33.439 called Indian Territory. 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:38.160 Which was carved out and set aside by policymakers in 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:43.400 order to house tribes who were forcibly removed on the 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:44.640 Trail of Tears. 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:49.360 The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Quapa, and other tribal nations gave up 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:53.679 their ancestral homelands in exchange for new treaty homelands assigned 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:57.199 in Indian Territory, and there was a promise that this 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.600 would be Indian land, land that would never be made 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:05.000 to be part of any state. The federal government opened 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:09.120 Indian Territory in the eighteen thirties, and almost immediately, non 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.760 native people around the country tried to figure out how 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:15.200 to get this land out of Native hands and so 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.400 over decades, the government made laws and policies inside new 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.880 treaties with tribal nations that chipped away at Native land. 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.120 Tribes were even pushed out of some two million acres 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.679 of land around what's now Oklahoma City. This was called 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:33.800 the Unassigned Lands. The Battle to Settle those Unassigned Lands. 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.200 It was one of the first big steps toward Oklahoma statehood. 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:40.520 That story starts with a group called the Boomers. 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:45.559 The history of Boomers has very much been erased. 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:47.800 And it all comes to a head in the late 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.760 eighteen seventies with men like David Paine. 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:53.680 David Payne was the founder of what he called the 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:59.240 Oklahoma Colony. They saw themselves as colonists, and he would 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:02.199 get people to join together with him as fellow colonists, 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.400 and then they would lead raids into Indian territory, into 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:08.000 the Unassigned Lands. 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:12.320 Amandasa's Pain knew it was against federal law to intrude there, 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:15.440 and that federal marshals would come in and kick out 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:16.199 his followers. 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:20.320 This was purposeful, both the raids to settle and also 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:22.800 the desire to be ushered out. 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:26.640 Pain lit a violent campaign against Native people in the 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.600 Unassigned Lands. He made a lot of noise around the 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:33.320 country too. He and his followers, who called themselves Boomers, 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.320 began a national media campaign. 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:39.920 To paint themselves as victims. How can there be any 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:42.600 land left in the United States upon which the white 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.680 man cannot go? And that was a very successful media campaign. 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:49.600 And one way to make that work was of course, 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.760 to go in, start to settle, and be ushered out 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:55.320 to have standoffs with the federal marshals. 0:14:56.000 --> 0:15:02.080 The Boomer movement picked up a lot of support from cattlemen, farmers, speculators, businessmen, 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:07.160 and politicians. They all had interests in undoing federal laws 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:11.080 that protected Indian territory. Shouldn't they have the right to 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:14.640 this land too? That was the argument and pain and 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:16.840 the Boomers won out, and. 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.040 What it culminated in was the opening of the Unassigned Lands. 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:24.640 In eighteen eighty nine, President Benjamin Harrison declared sections of 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:29.560 Indian Territory open for settlement. Within weeks, tens of thousands 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.760 of people arrived at the outskirts of Indian Territory ready 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.960 to rush in and claim one hundred and sixty acres. 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:40.240 April the twenty second, eighteen eighty nine, the day of 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:44.640 the first largest and most glorified land run. 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.880 The land run, a rush to stake out so called 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:55.880 free land. 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:58.840 Well, freeland never came at such great a cost. 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:01.480 There was more more than one land run, but the 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:05.600 one Amanda's talking about is the most remembered picture. This 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:12.480 hundreds of men on horseback, schooners, others on foot, women, 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.960 children lined up. They were waiting for the sound of 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:27.280 a cannon and then they'd take off, doing whatever it 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:32.000 took to stay claim to this land. Some people went 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:34.760 in ahead of that starting gun to get the best plots. 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:39.600 Cheaters basically, but history likes to call them the sooners, 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.480 so that's the quick version. The US promised land to 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:47.080 tribes who were forced here. That land was chipped away, 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.440 and in spite of the promises made to indigenous people, 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:55.560 eventually this place became a state, Oklahoma. But when it 0:16:55.640 --> 0:17:00.040 all gets remembered now, it's usually celebratory. There are the 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:04.000 enactments of land runs at state celebrations and in grade 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:06.679 school where kids get to go outside and pretend to 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.000 lay clean to plots on a playground. There's a big 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.919 land run monument in Oklahoma City. And if you're a 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:15.960 college football fan, then you probably know about the University 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:18.080 of Oklahoma where Amanda teaches. 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:21.520 We are right here on the campus of the University 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:26.320 of Oklahoma, well known for its football team, the mascot 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:31.680 the Sooners. Who then when there is a touchdown, what happens. 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.159 A land run reenactment. 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:39.760 Happens every home game touchdown, a stadium full of people, cheer, 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:44.840 shotguns go off. Two horses named Boomer and Sooner lead 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:48.440 a covered wagon onto the football field and race around 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:52.120 the stadium. But in all those versions of this history, 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:56.560 there's something missing from the football cheer, the land run monument. 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:59.600 It's the same thing Amanda noticed was missing from the 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:04.480 music Native people. It's in a mission that's hurtful. In 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:08.560 those school land run reenactments I mentioned, Native children have 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:12.240 had to take part two for decades, reenacting an event 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:17.280 that drove their own ancestors off their land. The reason 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.320 we're going on about what happened in Indian Territory is 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:24.320 that this it's the history of Oklahoma, a history that 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:27.399 didn't make it into the musical, and that a mission. 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:31.240 It's kind of surprising once you consider where Rogers and 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:35.080 Hammerstein got the idea for their musical They didn't come 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:38.040 up with the story themselves. It came from someone else, 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:41.919 someone who was no stranger to the state's actual history. 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.280 Rogers and Hammerstein based Oklahoma on a play written a 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:50.240 decade earlier by a playwright who was born in Indian 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:54.320 Territory within the Cherokee Nation, and though the musical took 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:58.800 place in the Oklahoma territory, the original story before Rogers 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:03.400 and Hammerstein changed it took place in Indian Territory. We'll 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:04.040 be right back. 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:13.040 I don't think there's really a clean way to understand 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:17.320 musical Oklahoma without going back to that. This is a 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:22.560 both a play written by Roley Lynn Riggs, Cherokee citizen, 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:25.359 and these are the people that he knew. 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:28.440 Lynn Riggs was a lot of things for someone born 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:31.960 in Indian Territory in eighteen ninety nine. He was gay, 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:36.000 a playwright, he loved writing letters and poems, and he 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:39.080 was mixed race, being Cherokee from his mother's side. 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.200 He was born pre statehood, but then would have been 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.000 raised in the young state of Oklahoma. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.639 Amanda cop Greetham says that Riggs knew the complexity of 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:52.600 this place. It was his neighbor's story, his family story, 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:53.640 his story. 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:56.760 He often called himself haunted by Home. 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:00.160 We wanted to highlight some of his letters with a voice. 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:04.879 I can't make and drama or poetry. The quality of 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:06.199 a night storm in Oklahoma. 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:12.080 Home, Oklahoma was everywhere in Riggs's letters and plays, with. 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:15.200 A frightened farmer and his family fleeing across the money 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:15.800 yard to the. 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:20.719 Cellar he lived in New York, he lived abroad, He wrote, 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:25.119 He found himself writing over and over again about people 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:28.440 that he knew, the characters that he knew, the cadence 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.440 of their speech, the things that they talked about, the 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:32.600 songs that they sang. 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:35.560 When a son and his wife stumbled drunkly into his 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:38.919 mother's house, the words that came out of brazen, tortured throats, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:41.600 the murderer's hands threads. 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:44.520 When he says haunted, I think he meant it. This 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.600 was something that both tortured him in some ways, but 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:49.560 that he had great love and affection for. 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:53.600 Riggs wrote a lot of plays, but his best known 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:57.200 work was called Green Grove the Lilacs. That's the play 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:01.920 that became Oklahoma. As Riggs described it, the play is 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:05.800 about a vanishing era in the Midwest, filled with characters 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:07.680 he knew in places he'd been. 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.199 The reason I continue to write about Oklahoma people is 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.080 that I know more about the people in childhood and 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:16.080 youth than any other. But it so happens that I 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:19.400 knew mostly the dark ones, the unprivileged ones, the ones 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.760 with the most desolate fields, the most dismal skies. And 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:25.679 so it isn't a surprise that my plays concerned themselves 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:31.199 with poor farmers, forlorn wives, tortured youth, plowhands, peddlers, criminals, 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:36.880 with all the range of folk victimized by brutality, ignorance, superstition, 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:38.159 and dread. 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:45.000 Riggs started to play in nineteen twenty nine. In his letters, 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:47.560 he said it was going to be something new, a 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:52.400 drama intercut with American folk songs. Folk music was important 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:54.720 to Riggs because it was important to the place he 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:57.960 was from. One of the songs people sang there was 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:02.720 called Green Grove the Lilacs, Green. 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:08.280 Brold, Lilac Soul Spot, Glenn with the dew, I'm lone 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:13.480 with a dollon cents of Lodon with the year, and 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:15.920 by the next meeting. 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:19.760 Riggs finished Green Grow the Lilacs in nineteen thirty one. 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.280 It had a run on Broadway and played sixty four shows. 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.439 When Rogers and Hammerstein decided to use his play as 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:30.280 the basis for Oklahoma, they acknowledged how great the story 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.920 already was. In an interview with The New York Times, 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:38.160 Hammerstein said, quote, give credit where credit is due. Mister 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:41.280 Riggs's play is the wellspring of almost all that is 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:44.159 good in Oklahoma. I kept most of the lines of 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:47.560 the original play without making any changes in them, for 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:50.160 the simple reason that they could not be improved upon, 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:54.879 at least not by me. Riggs got royalties two hundred 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:57.879 and fifty dollars a week for life, but just eleven 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:01.760 years after Oklahoma premiered on Broadway Way, Riggs died of cancer. 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.240 Both stage versions of Riggs's stories center on the romance 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:10.520 between Laurie and Curly. Both versions have a surly farmhand 0:23:10.520 --> 0:23:14.119 who comes between them. In Riggs's play, he's called Jeter. 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:18.800 In Oklahoma, he's Judd. Riggs even bases a character on 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:22.440 his Aunt Mary. She becomes Aunt Eller in both shows. 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:25.280 You've had eighty years to see this, so we're not 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:29.639 gonna worry about spoilers. In both versions, Curly asks Laurie 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:33.960 to marry him, Jud's jealous. There's a struggle. Curly allegedly 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:37.720 kills Judd or Jeter. This sets up the final tension, 0:23:38.320 --> 0:23:41.480 will Curly go to jail or will he go free 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.919 to live happily ever after with Laurie. So much of 0:23:45.920 --> 0:23:48.919 the two shows is near identical, but one of the 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:52.240 big changes between the two is how they end. Near 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:55.439 the very end of Riggs's play, Curly and Laurie get married. 0:23:55.960 --> 0:23:58.520 Curly gets sent to jail for killing Jeter, but he 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:01.119 busts back out to come back to see his new wife. 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:04.240 The drama hits its peak when a posse of neighbors 0:24:04.240 --> 0:24:09.879 show up to haul Curly back to jail. What are you? 0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:15.120 He's a plow perminal he is breaking. 0:24:14.840 --> 0:24:15.320 Out of jail. 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:18.399 Was away at Eller accuses the neighbors of trying to 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:21.480 take Curly from his bride. But what's key is she 0:24:21.600 --> 0:24:24.200 accuses them of siding with the Federal Marshal of the 0:24:24.280 --> 0:24:28.440 United States. The way she's talking, the US isn't her 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:33.800 government but a foreign government in States, just foreign country? 0:24:33.880 --> 0:24:36.320 Is me ye? 0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:45.000 Poor and the mob, well, they're from Indian Territory. People 0:24:45.160 --> 0:24:47.960 like Rigs And just a quick note, some of the 0:24:48.040 --> 0:24:51.000 language Riggs wrote nearly one hundred years ago, might be 0:24:51.119 --> 0:24:54.160 offensive today. 0:24:54.560 --> 0:24:57.040 I'm having one in territory. 0:24:57.119 --> 0:24:59.800 I'll plump fullman and myself me too, but I can 0:25:01.080 --> 0:25:04.159 aunt Eller shoes the mob away. Curly stays with his 0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:06.920 bride Laurie, before the posse comes to take him away 0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:10.919 in the morning. Just before the curtain falls, Curly singing 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:15.600 a condemned cowboy with a guitar. As endings go, it's 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:20.920 pretty unresolved, ambiguous, all in keeping with Riggs's world of hardship, 0:25:21.280 --> 0:25:26.480 clashes and complicated underdogs in Indian Territory. Here's Amanda cop 0:25:26.520 --> 0:25:27.760 greatham So. 0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:32.960 Although the Rogers and Hammerstein interpreted the musical itself as 0:25:33.000 --> 0:25:38.679 Holy White, in reality this is a play about Native Americans. 0:25:40.160 --> 0:25:45.920 It is actually probably an all Native American play or musical. 0:25:46.880 --> 0:25:49.560 And when then Green Girl the Lilacs was then sort 0:25:49.600 --> 0:25:53.720 of taken and turned into the Rogers and Hammerston extravaganza, 0:25:53.760 --> 0:25:58.120 you know that it became well that context didn't move 0:25:58.160 --> 0:25:58.439 with it. 0:25:59.320 --> 0:26:01.760 By the time the story returned to Broadway in nineteen 0:26:01.840 --> 0:26:04.639 forty three as Oklahoma, it was a new kind of 0:26:04.720 --> 0:26:09.480 musical theater. Singing and dancing wasn't just used to divide scenes. 0:26:09.800 --> 0:26:13.480 They drove the story forward, and that story was lighter 0:26:13.600 --> 0:26:17.880