The First Code Talkers Paperback

Many Americans know something about the Navajo code talkers in World War II, but little else about the military service of Native Americans, who have served in our armed forces since the American Revolution, and still serve in larger numbers than any other ethnic group.  But, as we learn in this splendid work of historical restitution, code talkers originated in World War I among Native soldiers whose extraordinary service resulted, at long last, in U.S. citizenship for all Native Americans.  The first full account of these forgotten solders in our nation's military history, The First Code Talkers covers all known Native American code talkers of World War I, members of the Choctaw, Oklahoma Cherokee, Comanche, Osage, and Sioux nations, as well as the Eastern Band of Cherokee and Ho-Chunk, whose essentially unknown outside tribal contexts and thus could be as effective as formal encrypted codes, came to be used for wartime communication.  While more than thirty tribal groups were eventu