Module 7 - Choctaw Code Talkers

In the video “Module 7 – The Code Talkers”, Amy talks about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, and the incredible code system they used to help the United States armed forces communicate without fear of being compromised. This fascinated me, and after speaking with Amy about how I could write a blog about their story, she informed me that the Navajo were in fact not alone in their accomplishments! In this blog entry, I am going to tell the story of the first code talkers: a small group of Choctaw speakers in World War One.

The Birth of Code Talking

In the fall of 1918, the United States was fighting along the Western Front in Northern France in what was known as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The United States had committed a large number of their troops to the front lines and were facing a significant problem. The Germans had successfully managed to tap into the phone lines, intercept communications between American forces, decipher the codes, and then use this knowledge to gain a tactical advantage over the American troops.

The story goes that in the 142^nd Infantry Regiment, American Colonel A. W. Bloor was walking through camp when he overheard two Native American soldiers speaking to each other in their native language, Choctaw. After realizing that the Germans would not know how to decipher Choctaw and discovering that there were a number of other Choctaw soldiers in the military, the Choctaw Telephone Squad was quickly formed and sent into action, and the first example of code talking was born.

The Perfect Code

According to Dr. William Meadows, an Anthropologist from Missouri State University, there were significant advantages to using the Choctaw language as a code.

“It was a largely unknown language. Only a few American Indian tribes had more than 20,000 people so their languages weren’t widely spoken and most weren’t written down. Even if they were, it was usually only the Bible and hymns.”

This new code absolutely confounded the Germans, who seemingly couldn’t even begin to understand how the sounds they were hearing were being made, with some stories claiming that the sounds were created underwater! A captured German officer reported that the Germans were “completely confused by the Indian language and gained no benefit whatsoever”.

In addition to being all but unknown to the Germans, there was an added level of complexity to the code. Choctaw itself did not have words for some of the military terminology, so new words were created to represent them. I have included a small list of examples, with the direct translation of the Choctaw code on the left and the intended meaning on the right.

• ‘Little gun shoot fast' ----- Machine Gun
• 'Big gun' ----- Field Artillery
• 'Twice big group' ----- Battalion
• 'Eight group’ ----- Squad
• 'Scalps’ ----- Casualties

Here I have also included a memo, directly from Colonel A. W. Bloor to headquarters, discussing the success of the Code Talkers, sent on January 23, 1919.

               

“It was recognized that of all the various methods of liaison the telephone presented the greatest possibilities… It was well understood, however, that the German was a past master of “listening in” … We felt sure the enemy knew too much. It was therefore necessary to code every message of importance and coding and decoding took valuable time. The regiment possessed a company of Indians… there was hardly one chance in a million that Fritz would be able to translate these dialects and the plan to have these Indians transmit telephone messages was adopted. The Indians were used repeatedly in preparation for the assault on Forest Farm… The enemy’s complete surprise is evidence that he could not decipher the messages.”

A Terrible Irony

Despite the importance of the Choctaw soldiers towards ending the war and saving the lives of countless numbers of Allied troops along the Western Front, back in America, the Choctaw people were feeling incredible pressure from the government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs established boarding schools and forced Indian children to attend, where they were forced to “assimilate” into American culture. It is truly a cruel and terrible irony that while Choctaw soldiers were serving America by speaking their native language, back in Oklahoma, the American government was quite literally beating that very same language out of children.

Once the war ended, very few people got to hear about what the code talkers did. The government didn’t want to spread word of the strategy, especially in face of their attempts to eradicate Native American languages, and the code talkers themselves were incredibly modest, viewing what they did “as just doing their duty.” However, their work paved the way for many other tribes to serve as code talkers for the military, perhaps culminating in the work of the most widely known code talkers, the Navajo. In 2008, the Code Talkers Recognition Act was passed to recognize the overlooked work of the Choctaw, as well as the hundreds of code talkers from numerous tribes that followed in their footsteps.

References

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26963624
https://www.choctawnation.com/history-culture/people/code-talkers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_code_talkers

If you are interested in learning more about the Choctaw code talkers, it may be slightly challenging to find any more information! The Navajo code talkers have been widely researched and discussed, while the original code talkers have been researched much less. That being said, there are a number of interviews and videos relating to the topic that are not very hard to find!