There were men in the Congress in 1782, as well as out of it, who disliked using any eagle whatever as a feature of the arms of the Republic, feeling that it savored of the very spirit and customs against which the formation of this commonwealth was a protest. Among them stood that clear-headed master of common sense, Benjamin Franklin, who thought a thoroughly native and useful fowl, like the wild turkey, would make a far truer emblem for the new and busy nation. He added to the turkey’s other good qualities that it was a bird of courage, remarking, with his own delightful humor, that it would not hesitate to attack any Redcoat that entered its barnyard!
Franklin was right when he argued against the choice of the bald eagle, at any rate, as our national emblem. “He is,” he said truly, “a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk, and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish and is bearing it to its nest the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little kingbird attacks him boldly. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem.”
None of these depreciatory things could Franklin have truly said of the skilful, self-supporting, and handsome golden eagle—a Bird of Freedom indeed. (Audubon named a western variety of it after General Washington.) This species was regarded with extreme veneration by the native redmen of this country. “Its feathers,” says Dr. Brinton, the ethnologist, “composed the war-flag of the Creeks, and its image, carved in wood, or its stuffed skin, surmounted their council-lodges. None but an approved warrior dare wear it among the Cherokees, and the Dakotas allowed such an honor only to him who first touched the corpse of the common foe. The Natchez and other tribes regarded it almost as a deity. The Zuñi of New Mexico employed four of its feathers to represent the four winds when invoking the rain-god.”
Hence a war-song of the Ojibways reported by Schoolcraft:
Hear my voice ye warlike birds!
I prepare a feast for you to batten on;
I see you cross the enemy’s lines;
Like you I shall go.
I wish the swiftness of your wings;
I wish the vengeance of your claws;