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During a war, the ability to safely send classified messages
is key.
And probably the greatest top secret code talkers
in American history aren't Academy-trained officers
but Native American tribes.
When the United States finally entered World War I
in April of 1917, the country still
hadn't granted citizenship to many Native Americans.
Many Native children were still in government-run boarding
schools designed to teach them a strictly European way of life
in favor of their own languages and cultures.
Nonetheless, several thousand brave Native Americans
still enlisted in the US Army at the outbreak
of World War I. They came from many different tribes
all across the country.
One division of the Native troops, the 36th Division,
was made up of almost 1,000 men from Texas and Oklahoma.
In the summer of 1918, they were shipped off to France
to fight in a major battle.
At the time, no one knew who was going to win the war.
The outcome was far from certain.
France, Britain, the US, and the rest of their allies
had a bigger army, but couldn't seem to take control.
Why?
Well, one of the main reasons was that the German enemy
was really, really good at breaking their codes
and reading all their secret conversations.
Yeah, not ideal.
With their secret codes not exactly secret,
the Allies tried all sorts of ways
to trade messages, color-coded rockets, electronic buzzers,
and even good old-fashioned carrier pigeons,
but these methods were all too slow and unreliable.
The Allies had no idea what to do.
That is until one night when an officer of the 36th Division
overheard his Native American soldiers chatting in Choctaw.
Almost immediately, the officer realized something.
Native American languages like Choctaw
were almost completely unknown to the Germans who
were decoding their messages.
If they couldn't speak the language,
it would be next to impossible for them to decipher it.
Around 20 Choctaws spent a few days training,
then went to work sending secret messages
in their Native language.
The plan worked really well.
The Germans were completely confused.
And the Americans were able to quickly turn
the tide of the battle and maybe even help win the war.
So the very same people who were crucial to helping the US win
battles were being treated like second-class citizens
or worse back at home.
Yet despite that injustice, when World War II
reared its ugly head, Native American code talkers
answered the call once again and in much bigger numbers.
The US recruited young men from the Comanche, Hopi, Muskogee,
Chippewa, Oneida, and Navajo tribes, among others.
Of all the tribes involved, it was
the Navajo who created the most complex code by far.
The Native American code talking was so successful
that across both wars, it's believed
that not a single one of their messages was ever decoded.
Not bad.
Not bad at all.
Yet despite their critical code talking skills,
it took 55 years for these courageous men
to be officially honored for their accomplishments.
And that was just the Navajo.
It took another 8 years for the other 30-plus tribes
to be honored.
Nowadays, most classified messages are coded and decoded
digitally using state-of-the-art tech,
at least from what we know.
That kind of info is top secret after all.
But what's no secret is the sacrifice many thousands
of Native Americans made by putting themselves
in harm's way when the country needed them most.
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