Transatlantic Turkeys, to Europe and Back Again

The first waves of Spanish conquistadores pillaging their way through the Yucatan in search of gold and glory found another treasure, in the form of a large, meaty, and mostly flightless bird that had been domesticated by the Aztec people and their ancestors. The closest thing in the Spanish experience to the huehxōlō-tl, as the turkey was called in Nahuatl, were peacocks and peahens, which were raised by the wealthy in Spain and throughout Europe after having been brought to the Mediterranean by the Persians centuries before – and the turkey was much bigger, tastier, easier to raise. Alongside looted gold and silver that the conquistadors sent back to Spain were these American treasures of flesh and feathers – the first turkeys to travel to Europe, possibly as early as 1511. In a few short years, enough birds made the transatlantic voyage to establish a self-sustaining population, which grew quickly from an elite novelty to a commodity among the wealthy.[1]

European Turkeys

From their beachhead in the maritime nations of Spain and Italy, the turkey spread aggressively throughout Europe, advancing at a rate of 30 miles per year.[2] By the 1540s, they were so abundant in France that they were cheaper than swans, pheasants, peacocks, or herons. By the 1550s they had reached Scandinavia. By the mid-16th century, turkeys were being raised in large flocks throughout England, becoming such a nuisance that some towns passed laws to prevent them from wandering the streets. The burgeoning demand for turkeys in the London metropolis was fed by a growing number of East Anglian turkey farmers, who would herd their poultry, like livestock, by the hundreds and thousands to urban markets. Here too their price quickly fell below that of other large market birds and by 1572 turkeys cost about as much as chickens. By the 1580s, recipes for baking and roasting turkeys appeared in British recipe books, and they were well on their way to becoming a Christmas dinner staple.[3] 

Back to America

Given the turkey’s fantastic popularity and economical supply of protein, it is no surprise that colonists would consider the bird a valuable, if not indispensable, resource for establishing a self-sustaining colony in a foreign land. As early as 1583, “Turkies, male and female” were included in suggested inventory lists for colonial expeditions.[5] Shareholders of the Virginia company evidently agreed, because packed aboard the crowded cargo holds of some of the earliest ships destined for Jamestown, crammed next to barrels of salted pork and pickled herring, were domesticated turkeys.

The original Jamestown colonists didn’t record whether the first British turkeys to return to North America were carried aboard the Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery in 1607, or whether they arrived with supply ships following closely behind. But in either case, within four years of the struggling colony’s founding, a population of domesticated turkeys was sufficiently established to be included in Governor Thomas Dale’s draconian 1611 law prohibiting the killing of any domestic animal – including the turkey – “without leave from the Generall, upon paine of death.”[6] After three years more, the colony’s desperate food shortages had subsided and the settlers had “poultry great store besides tame Turkies, Peacocks and Pigeons plentifully increasing.”[7]

The American Melting Pot

Further north, the Massachusetts Bay Company also shipped domesticated turkeys from England to support Plymouth Colony within ten years of its founding. But this nascent turkey diaspora was not only British. The Dutch brought Dutch turkeys from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam, and the French brought French turkeys with them to New Orleans. The Spanish too carried domesticated turkeys from Spain to help establish their colonies in Florida.[8] The farmers raising these cosmopolitan turkeys frequently let them wander around the farm, free to pick at scraps and bugs in the grass. In this liberated state, they mated with whoever they pleased, which often included wild turkeys that came by to investigate the recent arrivals.

All across the Eastern seaboard, Mexican turkeys clucking with various European accents intermingled with wild turkeys to produce a bevy of new strains of domesticated turkey, all unique to North America. This melting pot giving birth to American breeds of turkeys – the American Bronze, the Bourbon Red, the Jersey Buff, the Narragansett – neatly mirrored the forces transforming European colonies into the American republic.[9] 

This comparison was made all the more apt by the simultaneous extirpation of the native wild turkeys everywhere the colonists settled. In 1612 William Strachey found turkeys in “great store, wild in the woods, like phesants in England, forty in a company as big as our tame here.”[10] But as early as 1672, it became “very rare to meet with a wild Turkie in the woods”, with “the English and the Indians having now destroyed the breed.”[11] It was not long before the only turkeys remaining in the East were those found on farms. Connecticut was the first state from which the Wild Turkey entirely disappeared, with the last being seen in 1813. Vermont lost its last wild turkey in 1842, followed by New York in 1844 and Massachusetts in 1851,[12] by which point the birds had all but vanished from the Atlantic states, and would not return to their previous numbers for well over a century. 

It only took 100 years for the turkey to be carried from Central America to Spain, travel over land throughout continental Europe, cross the English Channel, and finally be packed onto massive, creaking ships bound for the fledgling English colony in Virginia, unwittingly carrying the birds on the final leg of a multigenerational circuit. It is unlikely that a Bristol housewife baking a turkey or a Norfolk farmer raising one for market were conscious of the American origins of the birds they had so quickly integrated into their foodways and livelihoods. Similarly, it is unclear whether the colonists preparing for the transatlantic voyage that would take them to a new home knew that wild counterparts to the domestic turkeys they had already grown accustomed to would be awaiting them upon their arrival. 

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[1] Smith, Andrew F.. The Turkey: An American Story. United States: University of Illinois Press, 2006, p. 16-17.
[2] Crawford, Richard Dwight. “Introduction to Europe and diffusion of domesticated turkeys from the Americas.” Archivos De Zootecnia 41 (1992): 2.
[3] Smith, 24-38
[4] Wright, Andy. 2021. “Back When Your Thanksgiving Dinner Walked Hundreds of Miles to Market.” Atlas Obscura. June 9, 2021.
[5] Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. Edinburgh : E. & G. Goldsmid, 1889, in Smith, 39.
[6] For the Colony in Virginea Britannia: Lavves Diuine, Morall, and Martiall, &c. … London, Printed for W. Burre, 1612. United States: W. Q. Force, 1612.
[7] Hamor, Ralph, 1626, Thomas Dale, Alexander Whitaker, and John Rolfe. A true discourse of the present estate of Virginia, and the successe of the affaires there till the 18 of Iune . Together with a relation of the seuerall English townes and fortes, the assured hopes of that countrie and the peace concluded with the Indians. The christening of Powhatans daughter and her marriage with an English-man. [Albany, J. Munsell, 1860] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/rc01002778/.
[8] Smith, 83
[9] Ibid.
[10] Strachey, William. The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia: Expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country, Togither with the Manners and Customes of the People. United Kingdom: Hakluyt Society, 1849, 125-126.
[11] Josselyn, John. New-England’s Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of that Country. by John Josselyn, Gent. with an Introduction and Notes, by Edward Tuckerman, M. A.. United States: Michigan Publishing, 2004.
[12] Dickson, James. The Wild Turkey: Biology and Management. United States: Stackpole Books, 1992.

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