A Turkey in the Library!

If you live in Massachusetts, then you know that it isn't uncommon to see wild turkeys roaming around, and not just in rural areas, but in suburban neighborhoods, too! In fact, we even had a wild turkey on the grounds of the State House a few years ago. Though that turkey no longer visits us, we are displaying Audubon's Wild Turkey (plate 1) in our reading room this month, so once again, there's a turkey in the State House. The print depicts an adult male turkey, traipsing alone through the wilderness. A few years ago, we displayed the Wild Turkey - Female and Young (plate 6), which you can see here.

Wild turkeys were plentiful in the region in the 1600s, and it was part of the diet of the Wampanoag tribe and thus also the English settlers at Plymouth. If it was a component of the harvest meal we think of as the first Thanksgiving, then it may have been just one dish complemented by other fowl like geese or duck. On the Plimoth Patuxet website, we find a recipe for turkey sobaheg; sobaheg means "stew" in Wampanoag. You can read more about food of the Wampanoag in a past blog post. 

Due to a combination of over-hunting by a growing human population, and a decrease in the turkey's natural habitat, the wild turkey population dwindled and it was nearly extinct before an re-population effort in the 1970s. More information about the wild turkey is available on the Mass Audubon website. 

Be sure to visit us from November 5 through December 10 to see the wild turkey on display in our reading room. 

Elizabeth Roscio

Preservation Librarian