turkey

Meleagris gallopavo by Audubon, early 1800s.

The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is North America’s answer to the chicken. It tastes kind of like chicken and is raised for its meat. Turkeys are related to pheasants, quails, partridges, grouses, and ptarmigans.

Turkey timeline:

• -10,000,000 to -15,000,000: the first turkey, appears in Central America.
• -11,000: With the end of the Ice Age, 80% of large mammals in North America die out, horses and camels among them. This leaves North America with only two meat animals that can be easily tamed: dogs and turkeys. This spares North America of the diseases that wrack Eurasia, like smallpox and swine flu.
• -800: tamed turkeys in Mexico (Meso-America).
• +700: tamed turkeys in New Mexico.
• 1400s: Turkeys are raised for meat by Aztecs (good with spicy chocolate sauce), raised for their feathers by Pueblo Indians, and hunted for their meat, feathers, and bones in the Eastern Woodlands of North America.
• 1500s:
  • Columbian Exchange: The Spanish bring turkeys back to Europe from the Yucatan in Mexico. This is the kind most people eat today, not the wild turkeys of eastern North America.
  • Etymology: The English think turkeys are from Turkey and call them turkeys. The Turks think they are from India and call them Indians (hindi).
• 1600s: The Pilgrim Fathers are surprised to see so many birds from Turkey in North America! The Wampanoag Indians (not from India, another piece of hegemonic false cartography) bring wild turkeys to the First Thanksgiving, but deer meat was the main attraction.
• 1700s:
  • Pheasants introduced to North America. They are closely related to turkeys but are better able to live in farmed lands.
  • The French eat more turkeys than geese.
  • Ben Franklin prefers the turkey over the bald eagle as the national animal of the US: turkeys are “vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem of that, a Bird of Courage.” Bald eagles are cowardly and take food from other birds.
• 1800s: Wild turkeys are nearly wiped out due to over-hunting and the cutting down of their forests.
• 1900s: Wild turkeys and forests in the US make a comeback thanks to hunting laws and better management of public lands.

Where to live: They like forests, especially the oak forests which used to cover eastern North America. They also like tall grass – as a place to lay their eggs out of sight and to get the worms and insects their chicks need.

What to eat: insects and worms in the first few weeks, then nuts, fruit, leaves, and tubers.

Turkey porn: The picture most people have of a turkey is of a male during courtship, when turkeys are at their most dramatic. The “gobble gobble” sound and fanned tail feathers turn on females. Males fight each other to gather harems – but take no interest in child care.

Flying: Turkeys sleep in trees at night but mainly walk on the ground during the day. They fly to escape danger, but cannot fly very high or very far. This allowed Apaches to run them down with their horses.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Welcome to Native American Heritage Month 2018
• Thanksgiving
  • The truth about the First Thanksgiving
• The Columbian Exchange
  • The Spanish
  • swine flu
• Meso-America
  • Aztecs
• Eastern Woodlands
• Ben Franklin
• Pilgrims
• white oak
• hegemonic false cartography

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