Old SymbolsWhere every symbol began

Plate 1 A turkey with its tail fanned out

Turkey

The turkey is the bird at the head of the American Thanksgiving table. The one eyewitness account of the 1621 harvest at Plymouth mentions fowl and deer but never names the turkey; the roast turkey became the holiday’s centrepiece in nineteenth-century New England, where Sarah Josepha Hale’s writing put it at the head of the table.

Thanksgiving symbols. Also called Thanksgiving turkey, turkey pardon.

Meaning

The turkey of the Thanksgiving table is Meleagris gallopavo, whose wild ancestor lived in the eastern and southwestern United States and in central and northern Mexico. A 2012 study in PLOS ONE by Erin Kennedy Thornton and colleagues says the domestic turkey came from central or northern Mexico, but that the exact time and place of its domestication are still unknown, with evidence of at least two separate domestications, in Mexico and in the North American Southwest. How the bird got its English name is not settled either. The lexicographer Erin McKean told NPR that Europeans already called the African guinea fowl a turkey, and the American bird took the same name; she says the guinea fowl’s name is thought to come from traders who brought it through the Turkish region, and adds that the origin “isn’t settled fact”. The food historian Andrew F. Smith, quoted in the same report, notes that Europeans put “turkey” on many foreign things, including “turkey corn” from the Americas (see flint corn). Each year the president spares one in the White House turkey pardon.

Origin and history

Edward Winslow’s letter of December 1621, printed in Mourt’s Relation the next year, is the only eyewitness record of the Plymouth harvest celebration that survives (Plimoth Patuxet Museums). It says the governor “sent four men on fowling”, and that in one day they killed “as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week”. Winslow does not say which birds. William Bradford, the governor, writing about the same autumn, says that “besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison”. Plimoth Patuxet calls turkey at the feast probable. Kathleen Wall, the museum’s foodways culinarian, told Smithsonian magazine that turkey was not the centrepiece and that she suspects goose or duck was the wildfowl of choice.

The meat Winslow does name is venison. The ninety men who came with Ousamequin, the Massasoit, and whom the English “entertained and feasted” for three days, went out and killed five deer, which they gave to the governor, the captain and others. Plimoth Patuxet points out that deer were central to the Wampanoag way of life, while in England venison belonged to the parks of the landed gentry and could not by law be bought or sold.

The turkey’s place at the head of the table came later. Plimoth Patuxet says that in the 1830s New Englanders began to call the 1621 feast the “First Thanksgiving” because it looked like their own holiday, with church services, family reunions, sports and “turkey with all the trimmings”; in 1841 the Unitarian minister Alexander Young printed Winslow’s letter with the footnote “This was the first Thanksgiving”. Sarah Josepha Hale’s novel Northwood (1827) gave the country a picture of that table: “The roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table; and well did it become its lordly station.” Plimoth Patuxet calls it one of the earliest descriptions of the Thanksgiving feast table. Hale went on to campaign for a national Thanksgiving, and in 1863 Lincoln, answering her campaign, proclaimed one for the last Thursday in November (Thanksgiving symbols).

Franklin’s letter about the eagle and the turkey

Benjamin Franklin never asked for the turkey to be the national bird. His remarks come from a private letter to his daughter Sarah Bache of 26 January 1784, published by the National Archives’ records commission from the Papers of Benjamin Franklin. By then the bald eagle had already been chosen, and Franklin’s target was the eagle chosen as the emblem of the Society of the Cincinnati: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character.” The eagle on the emblem, he said, “looks more like a Turkey”, which suited him: “the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America”, and “a Bird of Courage”. Franklin also believed the first turkeys seen in Europe had been brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada; the archaeological study above traces the domestic bird to Mexico instead.

Where the turkey pardon comes from

The White House Historical Association dates the presentation turkey to 15 December 1947, when A. E. Matlock of the National Turkey Federation gave President Truman a 47-pound bird for his Christmas dinner. At first the birds were meant to be eaten, often wearing a sign that read “Good Eatin’ Mr. President”. The association repeats the story that the pardon began with Abraham Lincoln, who spared a turkey bought for Christmas at his son’s request; the National Park Service says it was Tad Lincoln’s turkey Jack, and that it was meant for Christmas, not Thanksgiving. The two institutions disagree about 1947: the Park Service’s timeline says Truman pardoned a turkey that year, while the association’s account records a gift for the table. By the 1980s Ronald Reagan was sending the birds to farms and petting zoos, and in 1989 George H. W. Bush became the first to call it a “presidential pardon”. Presidents now pardon birds every year in a televised ceremony.

See also

Wishbone, Cornucopia, Pumpkin and pumpkin pie, Flint corn (multicoloured corn), Three Sisters, Cranberry.

Sources

  1. Eye-Witness Account of the 1621 Harvest Celebration, You Are the Historian, Unit 4: 1621 Harvest Celebration (transcription of Edward Winslow’s letter, Mourt’s Relation, 1622), Plimoth Patuxet Museums
  2. Primary Sources for “The First Thanksgiving” at Plymouth, Winslow (Mourt’s Relation), Bradford (Of Plimoth Plantation) and William Hilton’s letter of November 1621, Pilgrim Hall Museum
  3. What did they eat at the 1621 harvest celebration?, You Are the Historian, Unit 4: 1621 Harvest Celebration, Plimoth Patuxet Museums
  4. What Food Was Served at the First Thanksgiving in 1621?, Megan Gambino, updated 26 November 2024; interviews Kathleen Wall of Plimoth Patuxet, Smithsonian Magazine
  5. Northwood; a Tale of New England, Sarah Josepha Hale, 1827, vol. 1, pp. 108–110 (Internet Archive full text), Internet Archive
  6. Sarah Josepha Hale, You Are the Historian, Unit 5: Giving Thanks, Plimoth Patuxet Museums
  7. Talking Turkey, Excerpt of Benjamin Franklin to Sarah Bache, 26 January 1784, from the Papers of Benjamin Franklin; 25 November 2020, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, National Archives
  8. Earliest Mexican Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) in the Maya Region: Implications for Pre-Hispanic Animal Trade and the Timing of Turkey Domestication, Erin Kennedy Thornton and others, PLOS ONE 7(8), 2012, PubMed Central, U.S. National Library of Medicine
  9. How the turkey trotted its way onto our Thanksgiving tables — and into our lexicon, Word of the Week, 26 November 2025, NPR
  10. “Good Eatin’ Mr. President”: The Curious Origins of the White House Turkey Pardon, White House Historical Association
  11. Lincoln and Thanksgiving, Lincoln Home National Historic Site, last updated 27 November 2024, U.S. National Park Service

Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.

Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research

Report a problem

Please don’t include personal details.