Turkeys Don’t Give Thanks

COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
Did the English Puritans and the Wampanoag eat turkey at the legendary first Thanksgiving? No one really knows, as no menus have survived. But the record of Edward Winslow, the chronicler of the Plymouth Colony, states that William Bradford sent out four men to go “fowling” before the meal, that is, looking to shoot some birds.

The colonists at the Plymouth Colony were Separatist Puritans or Brownists; they insisted their congregations be separate from the Church of England rather than try to reform it. In England they struggled against suppression for decades. Two early leaders, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, were executed for their beliefs in 1593 under the Seditious Words and Rumours Act of 1581.

In 1597 a small group of Brownists led by Francis Johnson emigrated from England to the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence south of Newfoundland. This colony did not persist. If it had, the first thanksgiving would have been celebrated with Mi’kma’ki tribal people, not the Wampanoag. The Mi’kma’ki name for these islands is Menagoesenog, “battered by the surf.”

The climate on the islands is relatively forgiving. Winter is mild, spring is cool, summer has a few heat waves, and fall is typically warm. Historically, birdlife has been abundant there. Early visits by ornithologists were recorded in a 1931 article in The Auk by Rev. C.J. Young. In 1878, Charles B. Cory of Boston traveled to the islands, the first ornithologist to do so. During the week of August 20 (early in the migration season) he shot “6 godwits, 64 yellow-legs, 6 teal, 9 snipe, 57 sandpipers, 7 curlew, 74 plover, 21 turnstones and 4 ducks.”

By the time Rev. Young got there in 1927, however, bird hunting was commercialized, and locals were approaching him, asking to be paid to collect birds’ eggs for the visitor. Young found that some birds formerly recorded had disappeared, but he did find a total of 115 species between what he documented and Cory’s list.

Had the Brownist colony persisted turkey would not have been on the table, as it is well north of its historical range, and being poor fliers, they were not historically present on islands. More than likely the Brownist would have feasted on seabirds. A historian of Separatism, Stephen Tompkins, wrote that ‘the expedition failed because of a combination of the hostility and prior occupation of the territory, the loss of their belongings and the non-cooperation of the crew’.

After 1610 the Brownists feuded among themselves during their exile in Holland, where they were poverty-stricken and probably could not afford to eat game birds, even if they had been available. A faction led by Francis Johnson decided that authority rested with the church elders, not the congregation as a whole. Henry Ainsworth led a group who opposed this “reform.” John Robinson attempted to mediate between the two factions, but in the end sided with Ainsworth. While it was the Johnson faction that founded the “Puritan” Massachusetts colony at Boston, the “Pilgrim” Plymouth Colony was drawn from the Ainsworth faction of Leiden, which was led by Robinson.

In 1620 the Speedwell carried a small number of the Leiden congregation to England to join the Mayflower with a plan for both ships to sail to North America. The Speedwell proved unseaworthy and some of its passengers crowded onto the Mayflower. Many of the Mayflower passengers were not Separatists at all, but merely emigrants from Southampton and London.

After Robinson died in Leiden in 1625, small groups of his faction emigrated to the Plymouth Colony until about 1633. But Robinson’s widow, his children and many of the remaining Brownists joined the Dutch Reformed Church.

The Brownists—both factions—brought to Plymouth an existing tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving, which could occur on any day of the week and were not associated with religious services. Historians believe that the timing of the autumn celebration in Plymouth was inherited from a Leiden holiday associated with a commemoration of the Spanish siege of Leiden in 1574.

Of the fall 1621 celebration Edward Winslow wrote “Our harvest being gotten in, our governor [Bradford] sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week.”

Bradford himself, looking back on the history of the colony, wrote “there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc.” But he was not referring to the Day of Thanksgiving in particular.

When I drive around Wilmot in 2022, 402 years later and 140 miles north of Plymouth, Mass., I see veritable herds of turkeys. Many of this year’s brood are still distinguishable by their slightly darker heads and smaller size, and winter’s rigors have not yet thinned their ranks. The modern turkey season in New Hampshire for archers extends from September 15 to December 15, but shotgun season is only from October 10-16 in the lower ⅔ of the state. That is, if you want to eat a fresh wild turkey for Thanksgiving, you have to know how to use a bow.

While wild turkeys were exterminated in much of their range by the mid-20th century, they have recovered through conservation efforts. Another fowl that probably graced the table on the first Thanksgiving is the “heath hen,” the eastern population of the greater prairie chicken. The Wampanoag and other coastal tribes regularly burned the land to keep it open for hunting. This practice allowed the prairie chicken to persist along the East coast. According to Charles Mann’s 1491, the East Coast tribes were already decimated by disease by the early 17th century. Their land-use practices had already lapsed in many places, which would have caused a decline in the heath hen populations but not those of the more generalist turkey.