My maternal grandmother was born at the Choctaw Indian settlement at Boggy Bottom, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in 1891. At the age of 8, together with two of her sisters, she escaped from a government boarding school. The three young girls found their way home along 200 miles of Oklahoma backroads and aboard trains for which they had no passenger tickets.
My grandmother was an original enrollee of the Dawes Commission during its mass enrollment of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes. She was Choctaw. She was determined and resourceful, and she was a fighter—all characteristics of the Choctaw people.
In 1917 and at all times from the first to the last shot of World War I, the War To End All Wars, the people of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma remained non-citizens. They could not vote in city, state or federal elections. They enjoyed neither freedom of speech nor freedom of the press because they had no press nor platform from which to be heard. To the rest of America they were the nameless and faceless romantic savages fictionalized in the pages of Harper’s Weekly and The Independent. They were afforded none of the rights and privileges that accompany citizenship.
On the contrary, the Choctaw people were regarded as wards of the United States when it was convenient and profitable for the government to so regard them, and as citizens of a sovereign Indian nation when that view better facilitated the federal government’s aims. The Choctaw were an abused, exploited, cheated and brutalized people. They were also fiercely patriotic in their relationship to their tribe and, though somewhat counter-intuitively, in their relationship to the United States.
At the onset of World War I. despite their status as non-citizens, hundreds of young Choctaw men volunteered for service in all branches of the American military. Among them were 18 men assigned to the Army’s 36th Division, infantry soldiers whose unique skills enabled the U.S. Army to turn the tide against the Germans in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign in France and whose service helped propelled America and her allies to victory. These men were known as the Choctaw Code Talkers.
The Choctaw Code Talkers of WWI were the first American Indians to be deployed by the U.S. military in wartime as encrypted communications specialists. They used encryption techniques that involved nothing more than speaking normally in their native tongue. The Choctaw language was altogether unknown to the enemy.
At a time when American military radio and wire communications were routinely intercepted and decoded by German forces, when the Germans seemed to have foreknowledge of every movement of American troops and materials, the Choctaw Code Talkers offered the security of their native language as a means of confusing and befuddling the German code breakers. Their plan worked, and it continued to work through the end of the war, allowing American commanders to outmaneuver the Germans and put a short end to the war in Europe.
In 1989 the Choctaw Code Talkers were honored by the French government which presented the Chevalier de L’Ordre National du Mérite (the Knight of the National Order of Merit) to the Code Talkers posthumously.
On December 13, 2007, H.R. 4544, the Code Talker Recognition Act, was introduced in the House of Representatives. The Code Talker Recognition Act recognizes every code talker who served in the United States military with a Congressional Gold Medal for his tribe, and a silver medal duplicate to each code talker, including eight Meskwakis.
Just as we honor the service of many Choctaw men and women today in Afghanistan and Iraq, we remember the service of Choctaws in the two world wars, Korea and Vietnam. Those interested in the contributions and sacrifice of the Choctaw Code Talkers and their successors in defense of the United States and her allies can learn more at the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma website.
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Wow! Thanks for this fascinating account of an all-but-forgottne page of the history of these United States! I’d known for years (possibly since Army ROTC at the University of Idaho, early 1970s) about the Diné (Navajo) code talkers in WW II and how these native Americans helped us beat the Japs by simply passing messages in their birth tongue. But these Choctaw code talkers did the trick a generatione earlier!
Talk about the native “code talkers” often gets me thinking about “code switchers”. They are people who easily slip from one language to a second during conversations — and may do it even in mid-sentence. Members of La Raza (Chicanos or Mexican-Americans) who live in south Texas are famous for code-switching. When I lived in Devine and then in San Antonio it fascinated me, and I got to where I could code-switch, too (tho’ not as “fluently” — or better put, “fluidly”). Some who overhear code-switching think it indicates a language handicap. But linguists and myself know that, on the contrary, it shows that the speaker has such a grasp of the two languages that she/he knows which one best expresses what they’re trying to say at any given moment.
“Code talkers” and “code-switchers” both are strong reasons for my firm objection to “English-only” proposals.
Fascinating history lesson!
It is good to see the contributions of Indian people highlighted. There are so many holidays, events and memorials for almost every other group in America but almost no recognition for the forgotten Indian. If there was a more widespread appreciation for the true history of Indians in America maybe something would be done about the injustices to Indian people that are continuing today.
I never knew that Choctaws used their language as a wartime code; you tend to hear about the Diné/Navajos in WW2.
This is especially interesting to me as I’m studying the Creek language, and am interested in taking a course in Choctaw, which is closely related. Creek is spoken by maybe two or three thousand people in the entire world, but Choctaw is doing much better — spoken by about eight thousand people in Mississippi alone, according to the tribal government’s estimate. I suppose there are at least as many in Oklahoma.
I have a PDF of Loughridge’s Choctaw-English dictionary and have picked up a few words. The Oklahoma Choctaw nation has a distance-learning language course, but it hasn’t gotten to Alabama yet.
BTW I still refer often to James Mooney’s book on the Cherokees, which I remember was a gift from you two. I’ve about worn that thing out with repeated readings, margin notes, and so on.