Some of the original code talkers of world war 1 from the Choctaw nation. They were not even allowed citizenship in the United States but saved untold numbers of lives and were not recognized for their service until 2008, 90 years after the end of that war. They were sworn to secrecy and no one knew of what they did for many years.

I remember first hearing of them on Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" in the '80s, though I believe he told of the Navajo in WWII.

Interesting. Had never heard of them until this thread. Seems like more attention (even though not that much) is paid to the Navajo code talkers of WWII. Thanks for posting.

There were also Cherokee Code Talkers as well as several other tribes.

I just googled Choctaw code talkers and read a couple of the articles. Fascinating!! Will have to read more about all the code talkers some evening instead of watching "the tube".

Tman is such a great place for learning new things, even if they aren't Trapping related.

Wasn't there a movie about them? IT was stated they were to be killed If they were to fall Into enemy hands. But then that might have been just movie drama.

For sure they weren't treated right by our government.

The movie was about the WWII Navajo talkers, with Nicholas Cage.

Yep that's the one. Good flick.

Windtalkers

They are putting up signs on the highways here in SE Oklahoma naming bridges after these men in honor of their service.

Good. Someone needs to try to keep things like this forward in history.
The reason I posted this is because the wife just got her annual tree decoration from the Nation and it is the code talkers.

Many vets are not treated correctly by the US government.

I'm curious how they did it considering their languages (choctaw, cherokee, navajo) may not have had words for military equipment. Linguistics is a fascinating thing. Example; in German an airplane is a flugzug or literally fly/flug thing/zug and an airport is a flugplatz or fly place.

I speak fluent German. do you know what the German word for brazier is? Holdzembackfromfloppin.

(They) Spoke their tongue using words that were also coded.

E.I. ant=tank, indigenous words for ant would be used.

You speak woth forked tongue.

Makes perfect sense. Code the code.

AMEN !

Those code talkers were amazing.

in the early days of the program they used many different natives and their languages. lakota and cheyenne were in the mix as well. the reason they ultimately settled with the navajo is because of the complexity of the dine language. from what i understand, it is virtually impossible to learn it as an adult. our language (lakota) is relatively simple, and it didnt take long for the japanese to begin to crack the code. native peoples have the highest rate of service of any race in the USA