Unbreakable Code: The Testing Begins

Sorry about the gap between posts. I've been at Killer Nashville since last Wednesday. More about that when I finish up with the Code Talkers.


On February 27, 1942, Johnston arrived at Camp Elliott with four Navajos. He considered fluency in this difficult language impossible for anyone who did not grow up speaking it. His plan,therefore, was to recruit not only those men whose first language was Navajo, but who also possessed a fluency in English as well. On the day of the test, Colonel Jones, who had installed a field telephone in the headquarters building and invited General Vogel and his staff to attend, handed the Navajos six messages similar to those used in military operations and gave them an hour to practice. The men used this time to choose Navajo words to substitute for military terms such as dive-bombing and anti-tank gun.

The testing began. A member of the general's staff would write a message and hand it to one of the Navajos, who translated it into his language and relayed it over the field telephone to a Navajo in another room. This man, in turn, would translate it back into English and prepare a written message. Fifteen minutes later General Vogel inspected the translated messages, and the accuracy convinced him that the Navajo language could be used for code purposes. On March 6 he sent the results of the demonstration and Johnston's proposal to the Marine Commandant in Washington, D.C. "The demonstration was interesting and successful," he wrote in the accompanying letter. "Messages were transmitted and received almost verbatim." He also requested the recruitment of 200 Navajos.

Next: Permission Granted

The Unbreakable Code: The Female Principle

Even during the Nineteenth Century the Navajo treatment of their women was strikingly different from that of most other tribes. This equality was close to the women's rights doctrine of today. The marriage ceremony was simply eating a meal together, and divorce was just as easy. The goods were divided equally with the children going with the mother. Free love went along with women's rights. None of the women were chaste, and venereal disease was always a problem.

A Navajo man would never make a bargain without consulting his wife or wives, and they never struck their women. Because of being treated well, Navajo women were better looking than the average women of other tribes, and consequently were coveted by the slave traders. Their main deity is a woman, who assists the Navajo after death to fight his way through the evil spirits and get across the great water barrier to the other side. She will not do this unless they have treated their women well.

Next: How the Navajo death beliefs affected the Code Talkers during the WWII.

The Unbreakable Code Continued

The Spanish arrived in 1598, and the Navajos, large and powerful by that time, raided their settlements frequently. By the end of the century they had acquired livestock-horses, cattle, sheep, and goats-by raiding and trading with the Spaniards. The Navajos considered these raids to be economic pursuits rather than war. Being very adaptable, they also learned agriculture, architecture, weaving, and improved pottery techniques from the Pueblo people who were already here when the Navajos arrived. Then the United States took possession of the southwestern territories in 1846. The Mexicans and the Navajos had been fighting and stealing from each other for centuries, and they didn't stop just because the Americans were in control.

The Navajo social structure was flexible, and underwent enormous changes over several centuries, but the reason they have been able to survive when other tribes have since disappeared has been their ability to adapt to their situation and environment. Certain themes have persisted in their culture, however: the primacy of age, individualism, reciprocity, and the female principle. Old people are honored. Age has as much to do with the power structure in a community as wealth does. Even the poorest of people are treated with the utmost respect if they are advanced in years. The rights and wishes of the individual are extremely important. No person has the right to speak for another, or to tell them what to do. Every debt must be repaid no matter how long it takes. The ledger is never closed. This is also true for a favor. It must be recompensed. If someone is unable to repay a debt, either of material goods or a kindness, his family feels obligated to do so.

Children are usually considered descended matrilineally. At the center of the social unit is a core of women - mother, daughter, sister - and their sons and brothers. Women are often the instigators in matters of romance. At the Squaw Dances, for instance, the girls most often select the partners. The wife's desire to live with her mother usually takes precedence over the husband's wish to stay with his, and often a brother/sister relationship is more important than a husband/wife one. This "female principle" could explain the low occurrence of rape on the Navajo reservation, which is nearly half that of the general American rural population.

Next: More on the female principle.

The Unbreakable Code Part 1

A few years back I started reading Tony Hillerman's mystery novels set on the Navajo reservation and became fascinated with the Navajo culture. I started doing research of my own on them and came across the story of the Code Talkers assigned to the Marines in the Pacific. This is such an intriguing story I wanted to share it with others, but I'll have to do this in several posts. First, a little background.

Julius Caesar said, "I came, I saw, I conquered." His descendants and their kin, not wishing to be outdone by their famous ancestor, did likewise in the New World. They came. They saw. They took. They came, those restless Europeans, some searching for riches, others yearning for a better life than the one they left across the sea. Some fled religious persecution that ravaged the European continent. Still others came to escape the gallows. They came, for whatever reason. They saw a vast and beautiful land with room for all, it would seem, who had the tenacity and the grit to tame it. And then they took and took and took.

American for the Americans, from sea to shining sea. That was the belief in the middle of the Nineteenth Century as the United States geared up for its push to expand westward. Newspapers and politicians touted Manifest Destiny, the notion that the Americans were divinely sanctioned to cover the continent with their own brand of enlightenment. Americans were the chosen, ordained by God to extend the national boundaries from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico, and that's what they set out to do. However, there was a problem. Someone was already here, and they didn't go gently into the night.

The Navajos were one of the many native nations that lived in the southwestern section of the continent. They were primarily located in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southern Utah. The Navajos and their linguistic cousins, the Apaches, arrived in the Southwest sometime in the mid-fourteenth century. The traditional homeland area of the Dineh, meaning "the people," which is the name Navajos use to refer to themselves, is at the Gobernador and Largo tributaries of the San Juan River seventy miles west of Santa Fe. The earliest Navajos were organized into small groups with a headman whose job was to lead the people to find food and water.

Next: The arrival of the Spanish.