"They Had a Chance to Talk to One Another...": The Role of Incidence in Native American Code Talking

While formally recruited groups of Native American code talkers used in World War II, such as the Navajo, Comanche, and later the Meskwaki and Hopi, are well known, this article focuses on the incidental use of Native Americans in U.S. Armed Forces communications in both world wars. This essay docum...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEthnohistory Vol. 56; no. 2; pp. 269 - 284
Main Author Meadows, William C.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Durham, NC Duke University Press 01.04.2009
Duke University Press, NC & IL
Subjects
Accidents
American Indians
Anthropology
Armed Forces
Coding
Communication
Cryptography
Ethnography
Ethnohistory
Ethnology
Historical analysis
Historical source materials
History
Language
Language history
Language use
Latin American History
Linguistic research
Military history
Military personnel
Native and Indigenous Studies
Native languages
Native North Americans
Navajo language
North Amerindians
Social history
Sources and methods
Strategies
U.S.A
Uto-Aztecan languages
War
World War II
World War One
World War Two
Amerindian
Hopi
Use
Transmission
World War I
Navajo
Code
Vernacular language
Siouan
Ethnohistory
Creek
Pawnee
Seminole
Comanche
Communication
World War II
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Summary:While formally recruited groups of Native American code talkers used in World War II, such as the Navajo, Comanche, and later the Meskwaki and Hopi, are well known, this article focuses on the incidental use of Native Americans in U.S. Armed Forces communications in both world wars. This essay documents several instances in which the presence of Native American soldiers within the same or nearby units who spoke a common native language was discovered by accident, either by their commanding officers or by the members themselves, and their subsequent use in sending military communications in their respective tribal languages. These data add to the breadth of our knowledge of Native American code talking and the essay explores the context for the development of such opportunities, which, although they involved fewer men and perhaps less frequency of use, involved more tribes than formally developed code-talking programs.
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ISSN:0014-1801
1527-5477
DOI:10.1215/00141801-2008-058