What did you say? I don't understand

Tweet

Halito --"hello" I keep forgetting to share this tree ornament. I am a member of the Choctaw Tribe of Oklahoma. That is because my grandmother was listed on the Dawes Rolls in 1907, and I can document that I am related. Each year for the last several years, I have received a Christmas ornament from the tribe. My image is this year's ornament. It is an image that commemorates the Choctaw Code Talkers of WW1 and WW2. They were the first native Americans to serve that capacity in the US military. I had never heard of this. I saw the movie by the name of Code Talkers that commemorated the Navajo Code Talkers of WW2. It was accidental that the Native Americans were used in that capacity. Americans were needing to have secure communications, but the Germans spoke English very well and also were very adept at deciphering military codes. A commander noticed two Choctaw natives who were already serving in the military and observed that no one could understand them when they conversed privately. The military tried them to convey messages of an important nature and found that the Germans were completely taken by surprise, as they could not understand communication in Choctaw. Choctaw natives who were already serving in the military were posted at critical bases so that even though the enemies could wire tap the communication, the messages were indecipherable. One reason that native languages were so difficult, nearly impossible, to decode is that many of those tribal languages had never been written down at that time. They are now written languages. Sequoia, of the Cherokees, was noted as the first person to give a tribe a written alphabet. I know if I research that there is a place that I could learn to speak Choctaw. I just may do it.