From: Arthur Chandler <arthurc@crl.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 17:29:55 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Native American Encryption?!
Message-ID: <Pine.3.05.9310121729.A27002-a100000@crl.crl.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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  I remember hearing many years ago that one of the branches of the armed
aervices during WWII used a native American -- Cherokee? Apache? --
language to communicate. The Japanese (the story goes) went nuts trying to
crack the code -- unsuccessfully.
  Two questions:
  1) Can anyone give me a reference for this story (assuming it's true)?
  2) If one used a natural language for encryption, and the would-be code
crackers did not know it was natural language (say, Hittite), could they crack
it? I seem to remember that hieroglyphs were undecipherable until the
Rosetta Stone was discovered. But maybe current techniques would do a
better job....?