Most Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving, about 9 in 10, eat turkey with their holiday meal. But if you’ve ever wondered why so many of people eat turkey on Thanksgiving, the answer is a bit more complicated than you may think. 

Vocabulary

venison – the meat of a deer used as food

settler – a person who moves with a group of others to live in a new country or area

indigenous – inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists

fowl – birds 

plentiful – existing in great quantities

a one-off – done, made, or happening only once and not repeated

First Thanksgiving: No Turkey on the Table?

There’s no evidence that turkey was on the menu in late 1621 when the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth Colony sat down with indigenous Wampanoag people for what we now recognize as the first Thanksgiving celebration.

According to a contemporary account of that event by Edward Winslow, the settlers and Native Americans dined on venison, fish, and shellfish as well as corn and other vegetables. While “fowl” may have been served, that may well have referred to seasonal waterfowl like duck or geese, rather than turkey. 

Turkeys were plentiful in the region when the Pilgrims arrived, however. Estimates put the total number of wild turkeys in North America at more than 10 million before European settlement began. In his history of Plymouth Plantation, written more than 20 years later, the colony’s longtime governor William Bradford referred to a “great store of Wild Turkies” around the time of that famous meal in 1621.  

By 1789, when George Washington declared a day of national thanksgiving—a one-off, not a recurring holiday—Americans were eating quite a bit of turkey. “I don’t know that I would say it was a staple, but it was certainly being hunted and eaten by the 19th century,” Abrell says. “It was almost extinct in the wild by that time.” 

‘Mother of Thanksgiving’ Popularizes Turkey

But like most of the Thanksgiving traditions we know today, turkey didn’t become a part of that November holiday until the mid-19th century. This was largely thanks to the efforts of the writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale, who became known as the “mother of Thanksgiving.” 

In her 1827 novel Northwood, Hale included an entire chapter on Thanksgiving celebrations in her native New England and other regions. She also used her platform as editor of the magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book to sway both politicians and the public toward the idea of a national Thanksgiving holiday.

By 1854, thanks in large part to Hale’s work, more than 30 states and U.S. territories held Thanksgiving annually. President Abraham Lincoln made it official in 1863, declaring the last Thursday in November as a national Thanksgiving holiday.  Turkey was a key part of Hale’s Thanksgiving vision. 

Source: https://www.history.com/news/turkey-thanksgiving-meal