Talking Turkeys

by Jonathan Shipley

They gabber and then ascend into the trees. I upset a rafter of turkeys on my walk through Cherokee Marsh. I am thankful for it. More, it seems, than they are. They sternly call me names from the limbs.

I laugh. I start to move on so that they can be thankful, too, that a rascally human has moved along so that they can return to the ground to commiserate with each other and feed on a Thanksgiving feast of their own with insects, seeds, berries, worms.

I’m not the first to be thankful for a November walk amidst the dripping oaks, the rain-wet sedges, the bog birch. Far from it. There are the turkeys, for one; the deer bounding off the main trails, their telltale white tails flying up before becoming lost in autumnal camouflage; the sandhill cranes gliding overhead and caterwauling in the glades.

There are thankful creatures—frogs and beetles, chipmunks and cardinals—and people, too. Me, you, Madisonians, and indigenous people long before Madison was anything.

I walk by an effigy mound by the Yahara River, thankful for it.

Turkeys probably weren’t served at that first Thanksgiving meal near Plymouth Rock. The Wampanoag brought five deer to share for the feast. Colonists ate fowl, probably ducks and geese, easier to catch than turkeys. That first feast included shellfish, squash, corn.

Turkeys were likely spared. They poked around Massachusetts’ forests.

The Madison area’s first people celebrated with harvest festivals long before settlers arrived. The Ho-chunk had a fall feast, giving thanks to the Spirit for the harvest.

White settlers first celebrated Thanksgiving in Madison in 1838. “Amid gay strains of music from Roseline Peck’s fiddle,” it is noted in early records, “Commander Augustus A. Bird and 36 workmen united with Madison’s first settlers in giving thanks.” Bird and his party didn’t feast on turkeys, though the birds ran rampant through the area (as they do again these days). They ate venison, fish, potatoes, cranberries. Roseline Peck, the fine fiddler, noted that turkey was an impossible luxury at that time.

George Stoner, an early Madison settler, recalled, “Ducks, geese, quail, pheasants, and prairie chickens could be numbered by the million.” He continued, “In an early day, the surface of Lake Mendota would be literally black with ducks, for acres and acres.”

Ho-chunk guests may have been invited to that feast held at Peck’s cabin, near where the capitol building sits today. Peck had invited them to celebrations in the past. They may have brought much of the food consumed, including the deer, the potatoes, the fish, and marsh bulbs, perhaps collected at Cherokee Marsh. It isn’t in the record if they brought turkey, though they had used the birds for generations for their meat, feathers, and bones to make tools.

The turkeys I caught off-guard are still squabbling with me in the trees. “Make haste,” they seem to be shouting down. “Thanks be when you’re gone, human, so that we can enjoy this marsh again to ourselves.”

I’ll be going, turkeys. I’ll be gone; thankful to have this place alongside them, these few acres of peace, before heading home to my wife and children. A feast of love, there, my home, near the East Towne Mall.

I get in my car and drive away. The birds descend. The turkeys peck around for worms. A thankful feast.