Sculpture honors soldiers who used Native American languages to confound German intelligence efforts.
In 1917, a Choctaw Indian named Joseph Oklahombi walked 21 miles from his home in Wright City, Oklahoma, to Idabel, the McCurtain County seat, to enlist in the U.S. Army.
Oklahombi enlisted at a time when most Native Americans were not considered U.S. citizens—that didn’t happen until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
The U.S. government wanted him to forget his history, his culture, and his native language, but that didn’t prevent him from fighting for his homeland in World War I.
Shortly after he enlisted, Oklahombi and 19 other Choctaw men became part of an effort that used their language to help win the war for the Allies.
They became code talkers—Native American soldiers who used tribal languages to confound enemy intelligence.
On May 22, they were honored by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, which dedicated a sculpture to the memory of the World War I code talkers outside the Choctaw Cultural Center in Durant, Oklahoma.
“This monument honors our brave Choctaw warriors whose extraordinary service helped bring an end to a devastating war,” Choctaw Nation Chief Gary Batton said at the ceremony.
The bronze sculpture depicts three World War I era soldiers. Two of them use a field telephone and notepad to send and receive message traffic in the Choctaw language, while a third stands guard.
On the bronze notepad is a message in the Choctaw language requesting more “corn”—code for soldiers.
Choctaw artist Jane Semple Umsted, who has produced many works for the Choctaw Nation, wanted the work to show the courage and dedication exemplified by the Choctaw code talkers.
“I wanted … not just a sculpture of soldiers. I wanted [it] to be a depiction of the soldiers in action,” Umsted told The Epoch Times.
Action on the part of the code talkers is credited with saving potentially hundreds of thousands of lives, at a time when the Germans’ ability to listen in on communications and break codes was a major challenge for the Allied forces.
