[JoeProBono]

In 1917, Choctaw Indians were not citizens of the United States. The language the Choctaws spoke was considered obsolete. That same language later helped bring about a successful end to the first World War Of more than 10,000 Native Americans serving in WWI, a number of Choctaw soldiers “confounded German eavesdroppers”.

[Ole Okie]

When I was a lad well prior to WW2, a couple came to the little town in southwestern Oklahoma where my grandparents lived. They claimed to be from some university in New York and had a project "to record and preserve the Comanche language."

They rented a room from my grandparents for the summer. and I stayed with my grandparents most of that summer. I really liked the couple, particularly the lady (she was charming).

They busied themselves daily with going around the dusty roads of that area, meeting with various Comanches and recording the Comanche language phonetically (pre-tape recorders). At night, the man spent time trying to teach my grandfather German.

At the end of that summer they went back to New York, promising to be back the next summer on the same mission.

My grandparents eventually got word from the FBI that the couple had been arrested.

They were part of Hitler's anthropologists sent to record various Indian languages.