The Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I in particular have a documented history, though the extent and formality of their program differed from the institutionalized Navajo Code Talker program developed two decades later.

In World War II, the Navajo Code Talker program was the largest, the most formalized, and the most thoroughly documented of the Native communications programs.

But other Native languages were also used in various contexts during the war.

Meskwaki (Fox) language speakers, Comanche Code Talkers who served with the Army in Europe, and members of other nations who used their languages in communications roles all contributed to a broader pattern of Native linguistic service that the single-minded focus on the Navajo program in popular culture has somewhat obscured.

Understanding this broader context matters because it reframes the Navajo program from an isolated curiosity into something more significant: evidence that the U.S. military had, from at least 1917 onward, recognized — when it found itself in urgent need — that Native languages possessed qualities that made them strategically valuable for secure communications.

The Navajo program was different in its scale, its systematic development, and its specific context of a code built on top of a natural language rather than simply using the natural language directly.