David Murray

dmurray@greatfallstribune.com

In death as in life, the honor and respect bestowed upon Gilbert Horn Sr. transcends cultures and generations.

The decorated World War II combat veteran and Assiniboine tribal leader was laid to rest Wednesday, his earthly remains interred within a plot at the Horn family cemetery overlooking the Milk River.

Horn died Sunday at the age of 92.

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To the broader outside world, Horn was best known as a Native American code talker who fought with the storied WWII deep penetration unit known as Merrill’s Marauders. But to those who knew him best, he was simply “Uncle Gil,” chief of the Fort Belknap Assiniboine Tribe.

“My dad touched a lot of people’s lives in a good way,” said Willowa “Sis” Horn, Gilbert Horn’s oldest daughter. “But to me he was just daddy – just my dad.”

Horn was born May 12, 1923, during an era when much of white society viewed Native culture as a quaint anachronism – something that would be gradually extinguished as Indian people were assimilated into the dominant western culture.

“The language which they forbade me to speak is the language that saved this country,” Horn would say on occasion, reflecting back on his grade school education, as well as the important role he played as a code talker during the Second World War.

After enlisting in the National Guard in 1940, Horn was quickly transferred to the regular Army, then thrust into some of the most violent battles in the Pacific. He fought as a rifleman and used his native Assiniboine language to transmit encrypted radio messages for the Army during the battle for Guadalcanal and in campaigns from New Guinea to the Solomon Islands.

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In the fall of 1943, Horn volunteered for an elite deep penetration unit fighting behind Japanese lines in Burma. During five months of field operations, Horn and the 2,750 men of Merrill’s Marauders completed an 800-mile trek across the Himalaya Mountains and engaged the enemy in five major battles and dozens of smaller skirmishes.

Horn was wounded four times, including rounds to the chest, back and jaw. For his service he was awarded both a Purple Heart and a bronze star. His entire unit was recognized for “gallantry, determination, and esprit de corps in accomplishing its mission under extremely difficult and hazardous conditions.”

However, it is for his life and accomplishments after the war that Horn is most fondly remembered on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

He returned to Montana a war hero and at first believed the racism he’d known as a child would be erased.

“After World War II, they thought things would be changed,” longtime family friend Jessie James said of the Native American veterans’ experience, “that there would be more opportunities – but there weren’t.”

If the experience embittered Horn, he never showed it. In the jungles of Burma and Guadalcanal there were no Indian and white soldiers. They were brothers in arms, warriors together, and the memory of that shared camaraderie tempered the feelings of disappointment Horn felt upon finding so little had changed back home in Montana.

“The war was very profound in his life because it made all the Indian soldiers equals with the non-Indians,” Horn’s granddaughter Liz Doney said of her grandfather’s perspective. “He befriended them and became their comrade. He was kind of a bridge between the cultures.”

For many years, Horn would host an annual feed for all the area veterans. The event always took place in May, near the occasion of his own birthday. It was Horn’s present to the memory of the men he’d served with.

Following the war, Horn threw his energies into work on his family’s ranch. Beginning in the 1950s, he began to assume a greater leadership role within the Assiniboine Tribe.

Horn served as councilman on the Fort Belknap Community Council for 19 years and as a tribal court judge for eight years. It was during his term on the bench that Fort Belknap’s first tribal juvenile court regulations were written.

Though Horn only finished the eighth grade himself, throughout his life he was always a strong advocate for education.

“One of the things he stressed to all of us was the value of education, and he did a lot for the schools,” Sis Horn said.

During his life in public office, Horn served for six years on the National Indian Head Start Board and was instrumental in having the preschool education program established on the Fort Belknap Reservation. One of that institution’s buildings is now named for him: The Gilbert Horn Sr. Early Head Start Center.

Gilbert Horn’s greatest pride, however, was reserved for his family. He raised 11 children during his lifetime, and to his dying day, Horn rejoiced at the opportunity to play with his many grandchildren.

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“Even when he was really sick, he managed to reach out and touch them and tease them,” Sis Horn said. “He sure loved little kids.”

Today the Horn family counts 37 grandchildren, 71 great-grandchildren and 18 great-great-grandchildren who descended from their honored grandfather.

As he neared the end of his life, the weight of all Horn had accomplished gradually percolated to the surface. In May 2014, Montana State University-Northern presented Horn with an honorary doctoral degree in humanitarian services. To this day, Horn remains only the second person in the university’s 87 year history to ever receive such an honor.

In that same month, Horn was named chief of the Fort Belknap Assiniboine Tribe, the first chief the tribe had recognized since the 1890s.

“He wanted us all to have his story in our hearts and to preserve his traditional ways,” Liz Doney said of her grandfather’s legacy. “He wanted us all to carry that through to the next generation.”

Toward the end of a wake held in Gilbert Horn’s honor, 23 women from the Horn family lined up to participate in a traditional Assiniboine ceremony to acknowledge the grief at their grandfather’s passing. One by one, each had their long hair cut away, marking them for a yearlong period of mourning.

Their shorn locks were then tenderly laid beside Gilbert Horn in his casket, a tribute to accompany him on his journey to the afterlife.