Happy Thanksgiving everyone! A birding group can’t help but talk about Turkeys on this day. This year’s fun fact was provided by Audubon. Native Americans Domesticated Turkeys Long Before the Pilgrims Arrived begins by stating: Indigenous societies in the Americas valued the birds so highly that they tamed them at least twice, including in the U.S. Southwest. Turkey feathers still have abundant uses to tribes there today.
Dating back more than 2,000 years, the handsome ground birds were raised as a staple of Indigenous societies on this continent, with early domesticated turkey remains appearing in archeological sites from Mesoamerica to the desert Southwest of today’s United States and possibly in the Southeast as well. Those remnants suggest that the turkey was valued enough to be tamed from the wild not just once, but on at least two separate occasions.
Read the article to learn more about how Native Americans Domesticated Turkeys Long Before the Pilgrims Arrived .
In case you need more Turkey trivia to impress your Thanksgiving guests, Seabrook Island Birders has previously posted blogs:
- Bird of the Week: Wild Turkey
- Talk Turkey to Me: 10 fun facts about Turkeys
Have a great holiday….maybe next year we’ll write about birds other than Turkeys that cultures revere.
Submitted by: Judy Morr