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Show I 1 POULTRY B ANTIQUITY OF THE TURKEY. H C. S. Gorlinc. HH Written for the Dcscrct Farmer. H Every poultry raiser is more or less H familiar with the greatest of all gal- H liliaceous bird? America's best con- H tribution to the poultry yard -tHe H1 turkey, and doubtless too, not many Hj arc aware of the origin of the presenv H; known species ' and varieties. The H1 name given to America's greatest Hi game bird is very misleading. The i first account we have of the bird is by H Hernando Cortcz, who took with him H on his return to Spain from one of his H expeditions to the New World, i H number of them and thus they wctc Hl first introduced to Europe. Thci-i H the curiosities and products that he H brought back were handled by Jewish H merchants, who for want of a better name, applied to the birds the Hebrew name "tukki," meaning a peacock. When the birds were first shipped to England about 1541, the Hebrew name followed and was corrupted by the English speaking people into "turkey." While the species carried by- Cortcz to Spain was undoubtedly the Mcleagris mcxicaura. the original specie indigenous to Central America Ameri-ca and what is now the Southwestern States and Mexico, yet the similarity of the birds led the first settlers of the Atlantic seaboard more than a hundred years later to apply the name turkey to the species foiuid in eastern America. When the Pilgrim Fathers lauded upon the shores of New England Eng-land they found indigenous to the forests the wild turkey, (Mcleagris gallopavo) common to the Mississippi Valley and the Eastern States, from which species the seven varieties nf the domestic turkey, namely the Bronze, Narragansctt, Buff, Slate, White, Black and the Bourbon Red , have been bred and developed by arf tificial crossing and intelligent sclec- tion. One other species of turkey, (Mcleagris (Mc-leagris occlLatai) is indigenous to the peninsula of Yucatan and to Honduras, Hondur-as, but this species and the M. gallopavo gallo-pavo arc doubtless remote variation of M. mcxicana, which arc known by students or archaeology to have been indigenous to the Pacific Coast country, coun-try, -and particularly to that section embraced by the states of "Utah, Colorado, Colo-rado, Arizona and New Mexico. In this vast region, particularly along the Kanab Wash, the Escalantc and San Juan Rivers in Utah, the Mancos and Colorado Rivers, the Gila and Rio Grande and tributaries dwelt a dense population in an advanced state of civilization when the progenitors progen-itors of European nations were but half clad in the skins of wild beasts and dwelt in caves. High up in the cliffs in the canyons along these streams arc the remains of thousands of the rock dwellings and palaces and temples of this ancient race of Americans Ameri-cans who arc known to modem times as the Cliff Dwellers. Implements of war and of industry found in these ancient dwellings indicate great antiquity an-tiquity and that the people belonged to the stone age and even prior to that and that these great canyons and adjoining mesas were inhabited for countless ages by a people very superior su-perior to the Indian tribes found here by Europeans. In the ancient ditches, almost obliterated by erosion, we learn of the most ancient system, of irrigation known to man, of the fields of corn and beans and squash thus cultivated when the great cities of London and Paris were unknown. In the floors and store-rooms of these ancient rock dwellings arc found whole cars of corn and the beans and seed of the squash and pumpkins they cultivated. Under the debris of fallen walls and inner earth heaps along with the implements of war and chase, the tools for building, household utensils, and clothing and ornaments are found the implements used for the manufacture of domestic arliclies such as -awls of turkey bone and turkey bone needles. These awls and needles were used in the preparation prepara-tion of rush matting and baskets platted with a harness of yucca rope and hide iand in making sandals $f yucca and feather cloth from turkey f feathers and yucca fibre with which, to cover their dead. In this mute -stony of the dead past we read of the d-micstication d-micstication and utilization of the tu'r-key tu'r-key which prehistoric imlan appropriated" appro-priated" on the western continent just as prehistoric mam tamed and domes-tfeated domes-tfeated the wild birds and animals and plants of the so called old world in countless ages before the old world was new, and there is every evidence to indicate that this ancient race of men may have been indeed, must have been wipqd from the face of tfic I earth iit the twinkling of an eye by j some great catastrophe, possibly suc.li . as occurred in the year 1902 when two .thirds of the entire population of the Island of Martinique were asphyxiat- cd by the terrible eruption of Mont Pclcc. Gone in the shadows of the past is this greatest race of the palaeolithic pala-eolithic age and but for the mul'c story left behind entombed bencafh the solid rock in the dizzy heights eft those mighty canyons, the great antiquity an-tiquity of the progenitors of Amcri ca's greatest game bird might never have been known. That the turkejr was domesticated by this ancient race , there can be no doubt, for there is .much evidence to indicate that their bones were in common use for counf-lcss counf-lcss ages as awls and needles in the r. manufacture of almost ail domestic articles, clothing and ornaments arid particularly in the manufacture pj feather cloth which was made by splitting off the downy part of fcatljr crs and wrapping the thin layer of quill around a yucca string, thus form ing a feather cord as large as a finger and these were interlaced and tied together forming a mantle or shroud I in which their dead were wrapped. ' From the extensive use of bones and j feathers, we arc led to believe that i the turkey was reared in great num- bors in domestication, for with the primitive weapons at command in X that age, it would not have been pos- I hible to bring down the wild birds in sufficient numbers even by the most expert hunters to supply the da- j mand, although there might have been I a sufficient number of them, which ! j is not at all likely. In summary, , j then, we can only conclude that the domestication of the turkey far out , dates modern civilizat'on, and by the laws of evolution and variation, tile ! different species as now known were ' perpetuated, one species to the north ,and cast acted upon by the force ot environment, became localized in the eastern habitat, and the other two species acted upon by different environments, en-vironments, took on the characteristics characteris-tics and plumage incident to their particular habitat. |
