How Native American Code Talkers Pioneered a New Type of Military Intelligence

Among the most consequential innovations in modern military communications emerged not from a laboratory but from a chance encounter on the Western Front. In 1918, three Choctaw soldiers deployed to France — Solomon Lewis, James Edwards, and Ben Carterby — were overheard conversing in their Native language by a company commander of the U.S. 36th Division. That officer recognized what enemy intelligence never could: a language with no long written tradition, spoken almost exclusively within one small nation, functioned as an unbreakable cipher. The Choctaw became the first “phone talkers,” delivering messages over field telephones, and their example shaped a strategy that eventually spanned more than a dozen Indigenous languages during World War II. Their story carries a bitter irony: the same government that punished these languages in boarding schools came to depend on them to win battles.

The Choctaw Nation: Homelands, Removal, and Resilience

The Choctaw, one of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes” of the southeastern United States, traditionally farmed corn, beans, and pumpkins while hunting, fishing, and gathering wild edibles. Despite allying with the United States during the War of 1812, they were pressured afterward into ceding millions of acres of land to the government. Following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, most members of the nation were forced to relocate to present-day Oklahoma along routes that left an estimated 2,500 dead. A Choctaw chief’s description of a “trail of tears and death” became the phrase attached to all Indian removal west of the Mississippi River. The forced removals of the 1830s reshaped Choctaw life and, generations later, placed their descendants in the Oklahoma and Texas units that would fight in France.

Boardings Schools and the Irony of the Battlefield

By the time the United States entered World War I in April 1917, citizenship had not yet been granted to all Native Americans, and government-run boarding schools were still largely attempting to stamp out Indigenous languages and cultures as part of a broader campaign of forced assimilation. The boarding school system’s assault on Native languages makes the code talkers’ achievement all the more striking. Nonetheless, several thousand Native Americans enlisted to fight the Central Powers, and nearly 1,000 men from some 26 tribes joined the 36th Division alone. “They saw that they were needed to protect home and country,” said Judy Allen, senior executive officer of tribal relations for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, “so they went to the nearest facility where they could sign up and were shipped out.”

The Meuse-Argonne Campaign and the Birth of Code Talking

In the summer of 1918, the 36th Division arrived in France for the Meuse-Argonne campaign, a major offensive along the Western Front whose outcome was still very much in doubt. “World War I really wasn’t decided until very, very late,” explained William C. Meadows, a Native American studies professor at Missouri State University and an expert on code talking. Allied communications were the pressing vulnerability: German forces listened in on Allied traffic and broke codes generally built on European languages or mathematical progressions. “We couldn’t keep anything secret,” Allen said. Sending human runners proved equally ineffective, since roughly one in four were captured or killed, while color-coded rockets, electronic buzzers, and carrier pigeons were too slow, too limiting, too unreliable, or a combination thereof.

After the commander overheard Lewis, Edwards, and Carterby — who had attended the same Native boarding school together — he persuaded his superiors to post a Choctaw speaker at various field company headquarters. On October 26, 1918, the Choctaws were used for the first time as part of the withdrawal of two companies from the front. Having completed that mission without mishap, they played a major role two days later in an attack on a strongly fortified German position called Forest Ferme. “The enemy’s complete surprise is evidence that he could not decipher the messages,” Colonel A.W. Bloor later wrote in an official report, crediting the unit with turning the tide of battle within 24 hours.

The First Deliberately Coded Vocabulary

At least 19 Choctaws subsequently completed a short training session. Lacking words for certain modern military terms, they created substitutions: “big gun” for artillery, “little gun shoot fast” for machine gun, “stone” for grenade, and “scalps” for casualties. That innovation — inventing coded vocabulary rather than simply speaking a little-known language — made them true code talkers rather than communications operators. The war ended before the trained vocabulary could be widely deployed, but Bloor called the results “very gratifying,” declaring, “We were confident the possibilities of the telephone had been obtained without its hazards.” A captured German later admitted his side could not make heads or tails of the Choctaw speakers, whom Allen credited with likely bringing about an earlier end to the war and saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

World War II: Code Talking Across a Dozen Nations

Indigenous coders made an even bigger impact during World War II, when the U.S. government specifically recruited Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki, Chippewa-Oneida, and Navajo tribal members for such work. Roughly two dozen additional Indigenous languages were used on a more ad hoc basis. Native American service in the U.S. military had deep roots, but code talking was a distinct contribution. The Navajo developed the most complex system, with over 600 terms, compared with about 250 terms for the World War II-era Comanche and under 20 terms for the World War I-era Choctaw. The opposition is not believed to have deciphered a single code talker message in either world war.

How the Navajo Code Worked

One Navajo code translated Navajo terms into English letters that were then used to spell out words. According to the National World War II Museum, the Navajo word for ant, “wo-la-chee,” was used to represent the letter “a” in English. Another code contained word-to-word translations, but some terms had to be improvised: since the Navajo had no word for submarine, the code talkers agreed to use “besh-lo,” which translates to “iron fish.” “Even the other tribe members back home didn’t know what this coded vocabulary meant,” Meadows said. “It was all gibberish to them.” Navajo Marines served as observers and signal specialists across the Pacific, including at Saipan, where Carl Gorman manned an observation post overlooking Garapan in June 1944, and their work was crucial to victories at D-Day and Iwo Jima.

Recognition, Medals, and Modern Preservation

Only the Navajo, with more code talkers than all other Indigenous nations combined, became relatively well known, in part due to the Hollywood film “Windtalkers.” They received congressional recognition for their exploits in 2000, whereas the remaining tribes waited eight more years for a bill praising them for their “dedication and valor” and conceding that honoring Native American code talkers was “long overdue.” Pursuant to that legislation, a medal ceremony took place in November 2013 in Washington, D.C., with 33 tribes known to have had code-talking members in attendance. “My regret,” Allen said, “is that none of the code talkers were alive from our nation to see this moment, and none of their children were alive.”

Historical Context and Key Cultural Takeaways

• Origin: The Choctaw Telephone Squad of 1918 produced the first deliberately coded Native American military vocabulary, built from fewer than 20 invented terms.
• Why it worked: These languages were spoken almost entirely within their own nations, had no long written military tradition, and were unknown to German and Japanese intelligence.
• Expansion: World War II broadened the practice to more than a dozen Indigenous languages, with the Navajo system of 600-plus terms serving as the most elaborate.
• Central contradiction: The federal government suppressed these same languages through boarding schools while relying on them on the battlefield — an irony Judy Allen noted would not have been lost on the soldiers themselves.
• Late recognition: Honors came in 2000 for the Navajo, 2008 for other tribes, and a 2013 ceremony, making the preservation of oral testimony and veteran records an ongoing responsibility.

Frequently Asked Questions About Native American Code Talkers

Who were the first code talkers?

Choctaw soldiers of the U.S. 36th Division serving in France in 1918, including Solomon Lewis, James Edwards, and Ben Carterby. They were first deployed as phone talkers on October 26, 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne campaign.

Why were Indigenous languages so effective as military codes?

They were spoken almost exclusively within their own nations, lacked a long written tradition, and were effectively unknown to enemy intelligence. The Choctaw and later the Navajo also invented coded vocabulary, so even fluent speakers outside the program could not interpret the messages.

How did the Navajo code differ from the Choctaw code?

Primarily in scale and structure. The World War I Choctaw system used fewer than 20 substituted terms. The Navajo system contained over 600 terms and combined a spelling alphabet — such as “wo-la-chee,” the word for ant, representing the letter “a” — with word-to-word translations, including “besh-lo” (iron fish) for submarine.

Which other tribes provided code talkers?

During World War II the U.S. specifically recruited Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki, Chippewa-Oneida, and Navajo members. In World War I, American Indians from at least five other nations also transmitted messages in their own tongues, though they are not known to have invented intentionally coded vocabulary.

When were code talkers officially recognized?

The Navajo received congressional recognition in 2000. Other tribes were honored by a bill passed eight years later, and a medal ceremony was held in November 2013 in Washington, D.C., with 33 tribes represented.

A Legacy Written in Living Languages

The code talkers did not merely serve a war effort; they demonstrated that Indigenous languages — targeted for eradication by assimilation policy — were instruments of extraordinary precision and value. Their contribution helped shape modern military communications, and the secrecy surrounding their work meant that many veterans returned home unable to speak of what they had done. Today, tribal archives, oral history projects, and museum collections carry that record forward, ensuring that the Choctaw, Navajo, Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki, and Chippewa-Oneida code talkers are remembered not as curiosities of wartime cryptography, but as inheritors of living languages that helped decide the outcome of two world wars.