A History of North American Birds; Land Birds; Vol. 3 of 3

by Spencer Fullerton Baird; T. M. Brewer; Robert Ridgway

O. vetula, Wagler. Brownish-olive; the head plumbeous, lighter beneath; the middle of the belly tinged with ochraceous or rusty; tail, bronzed green; the five lateral feathers tipped with white or buff. Length, 21.00; wing, 7.70; tail, 9.00; tarsus, 2.50. Hab. Texas to Honduras, on east side of Mexico.

A near ally to O. vetula is the O. leucogastra, Gould (S. & S. p. 539) from Pacific coast of Central America. This differs in pure white of under parts. The size also is considerably less.

[¹¹³] Meleagris ocellatus, Temm., Cabot, Pr. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. I, 73.

[¹¹⁴] As with nearly all the animals which have been brought under domestication by man, the true origin of the common barnyard Turkey was for a long time a matter of uncertainty. As a well-known writer (Martin) observes: “So involved in obscurity is the early history of the Turkey, and so ignorant do the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to have been about it, that they have regarded it as a bird known to the ancients by the name of Meleagris (really the Guinea-fowl or Pintado), a mistake which was not cleared up till the middle of the eighteenth century. The appellation of “turkey,” which this bird bears in England, arose from the supposition that it came originally from the country of that name,—an idea entirely erroneous, as it owes its origin to the New World. Mexico was first discovered by Grigalva in 1518. Oviedo speaks of the Turkey as a kind of Peacock abounding in New Spain, which had already in 1526 been transported in a domestic state to the West India Islands and the Spanish Main, where it was kept by the Christian colonists.”

It is reported to have been introduced into England in 1541. In 1573 it had become the Christmas fare of the farmer.

Among the luxuries belonging to the high condition of civilization exhibited by the Mexican nation at the time of the Spanish conquest was the possession by Montezuma of one of the most extensive zoölogical gardens on record, numbering nearly all the animals of that country, with others brought at much expense from great distances, and it is stated that Turkeys were supplied as food in large numbers daily to the beasts of prey in the menagerie of the Mexican emperor. No idea can be formed at the present day of the date when this bird was first reclaimed in Mexico from its wild condition, although probably it had been known in a domestic state for many centuries. There can, however, be no question of the fact that it was habitually reared by the Mexicans at the time of the conquest, and introduced from Mexico or New Spain into Europe early in the sixteenth century, either directly or from the West India Islands, into which it had been previously carried.

It has, however, always been a matter of surprise that the Wild Turkey of eastern North America did not assimilate more closely to the domestic bird in color, habits, and by interbreeding, although until recently no suspicion was entertained that they might belong to different species. Such, however, now appears to be the fact, as I will endeavor to show.

The proposition I present is, that there are two species, or at least races, of Wild Turkey in North America,—one confined to the more eastern and southern United States, the other to the southern Rocky Mountains and adjacent part of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona; that the latter extends along Eastern Mexico as far south at least as Orizaba, and that it is from this Mexican species, and not from that of eastern North America, that this domestic Turkey is derived.

In the Proceedings of the Zoölogical Society of London for 1856 (page 61), Mr. Gould characterizes as new a Wild Turkey from the mines of Real del Norte, in Mexico, under the name of Meleagris mexicana, and is the first to suggest that it is derived from the domesticated bird, and not from the common Wild Turkey of eastern North America, on which he retains the name of M. gallopavo, of Linnæus. He stated that the peculiarities of the new species consist chiefly in the creamy-white tips of the tail-feathers and of the upper tail-coverts, with some other points of minor importance. I suggest that the Wild Turkey of New Mexico, as referred to by various writers, belongs to this new species, and not to the M. gallopavo.

In 1858, in the Report on the birds collected by the Pacific Railroad Expedition (Vol. IX, p. 618, of the series of Pacific Railroad Reports), I referred to this subject, and established the existence in North America of two species of Wild Turkey,—one belonging to eastern, the other to middle, North America. Much additional material has since corroborated this view, and while the M. gallopavo is found along the Missouri River and eastward, and extends into Eastern Texas, the other is now known to belong to the Llano Estacado and other parts of Western Texas, to New Mexico, and to Arizona.