Hagan, William T. 1918-

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Hagan, William T. 1918-

PERSONAL: Born December 19, 1918, in Huntington, WV; son of William Fleming (a bookkeeper) and Verna (a homemaker; maiden name, Grass) Hagan; married Charlotte Nix (a homemaker), January 31, 1943; children: Thomas M., Martha Hagan Ruffman, Daniel B., Sarah Hagan Esser. Ethnicity: "White." Education: Marshall College, A.B., 1941; University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., 1950. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES: Home—2542 Cypress Ave., Norman, OK 73072.

CAREER: University of North Texas, Denton, history teacher, 1950–65; State University of New York College at Fredonia, history teacher, 1965–88, department chair, 1965–69, acting academic vice president, 1969–70; University of Oklahoma, Norman, history teacher, 1989–95; writer, 1995–. University of Houston, guest teacher, 1977. Newberry Library, member of advisory committee, Center for the History of the American Indian, 1972–86; Oklahoma Humanities Council, member of board of trustees, 1989–93; consultant to Center for Studies of the American West at University of Utah and Frederick Remington Art Museum. Military service: U.S. Army, 1942–45; became first lieutenant.

MEMBER: American Society for Ethnohistory (president, 1963), Western History Association (president, 1980), Associates of the Western History Collections of the University of Oklahoma (member of board of trustees, 1990–).

AWARDS, HONORS: Western History Association Prize, 1989.

WRITINGS:

The Sac and Fox Indians, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1958.

American Indians, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1961, 3rd edition, 1993.

Indian Police and Judges, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1966.

United States-Comanche Relations, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1976.

The Indian Rights Association, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1985.

Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1993.

Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indian, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1997.

Taking Indian Lands: The Cherokee (Jerome) Commission, 1889–1893, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 2003.

Author of the pamphlets "The Indian in American History," American Historical Association Service Center for Teachers, 1963, 3rd edition, 1985; and "Longhouse Diplomacy and Frontier Warfare," New York State American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, 1976. Contributor to books, including Probing the American West, edited by K. Ross Toole and others, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1962; The American Indian: Past and Present, Xerox College Publishing, 1971; The American Indian: Past and Present, edited by Roger L. Nichols, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1986; The American Indian Experience, edited by Philip Weeks, Harlan Davidson, 1988; and Rethinking American Indian History, edited by Donald L. Fixico, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1997. Contributor to periodicals, including Military Affairs, Missouri Historical Journal, Pacific Historical Review, American Archivist, Arizona and the West, and New Mexico Historical Review. Review editor, Ethnohistory, 1961–64; member of board of editors, Western Historical Quarterly, 1973–78.

Some of Hagan's writings have been published in Japanese and French.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Charles Goodnight: Texas Panhandle Icon, completion expected in 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: William T. Hagan stated: "I entered a profession which mandates research and writing. My major professor in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, William B. Hesseltine, emphasized the importance of research and writing. As a historian, thorough research is my first responsibility, and then I try to distill my boxes of notes into a coherent narrative.

"My doctoral dissertation was on the Black Hawk War, written primarily from the perspective of the Army. But, by chance, in the 1950s historians first began to take an interest in tribal studies, as a result of being asked to assist Indians in their claims against the federal government, an area in which anthropologists had led the way. By 1960 the American Society for Ethnohistory had made its appearance, and some of us historians were beginning to concentrate on Indian topics. Government documents constitute our principal resource, reinforced by Indian oral history and tribal documents, the result being ethnohistory.

"My first book was an expansion of my dissertation, as is usually the case for historians. The revisions transformed it into a tribal history, published as The Sac and Fox Indians. Since then all of my publications have related to Indians and government policy on Indian affairs."