To support this claim, first, the
article provides an overview of turkey husbandry as a gendered practice and its
ritual/symbolic use and significance to Ancestral Puebloan people throughout
the northern Southwest spanning the longue durée from Basketmaker II to Spanish
colonization in the 1600s. Second, because Spanish demands on maize and Native
labor depleted domestic turkey flocks, turkey feather artifacts important to
kachina ceremonialism had to be reused, and turkey feather blankets used as
burial shrouds were replaced by woolen blankets. Finally, in a subversive
response, “Turkey Girl” (Persecuted Heroine type) tales attributed to allied
Pueblo groups (Keres, Tewa, Zuni, Towa, Northern Tiwa) during the post– Pueblo
Revolt period appropriated and repurposed one or more Spanish Christianized
folktales as an expression of pan-Pueblo resistance to Spanish culture and
revitalization.
. . .
Since the Early Agricultural
Period, maize had been an essential part of the paleodiet of domesticated
turkey and Ancestral Puebloan people (Lipe et al. 2016; Rawlings and Driver
2010). It is reasonable to assume that the size of household turkey flocks were
greatly reduced due to poor maize crop yields resulting from the drought of the
1660s, a problem further exacerbated by maize tribute demands forced on Pueblo
women. . . . The depletion of turkey flocks resulting from maize tithing and
textile tribute demands on women’s labor and time made it difficult to meet the
ever-present need for new turkeyfeather ceremonial objects and turkey-feather
robes and shrouds. These perhaps unintended assaults on Pueblo culture and
identity would devolve further during the 1660s into direct, coordinated
attacks by Spanish civil and religious authorities on the kachina religion.
. . .
Corn Maiden’s broken promise to
return to her turkey “family” by sunset, perhaps feeding time when they are
herded into pens (Z4), may reference the breakdown of the long-standing
relationship and “love” (Z1) between domesticated turkeys and Pueblo women
caregivers due to the unsustainable demands of the Spanish tribute on maize or
following the drought and famine of the 1660s. Due to the adverse impact of
maize tribute and drought, turkey flocks were apparently decimated along with
ritually important feather prayer sticks and turkey-feather robes/shrouds.
Later in the tales, turkeys— perhaps a metaphor for Pueblo people who fled to
mesa-top villages—escaped their confinement by fleeing up the canyons to the
mountain; for example, to Canon Mesa (Shoya-k’wikwi), to “top of hill” near
Kyakima (Z1), to Canon of the Cottonwoods behind Thunder Mountain (Z2), or to
“Turkey Track Mountain” (T2). The lived experience of flight to ancestral sites
on mesa tops confirms the Puebloan belief that “life is movement” for Pueblo
people (Duwe and Cruz 2019:115; Naranjo 2008). (Lynda D. McNeil, “Turkeys
Befriend a Girl: Turkey Husbandry, Ceremonialism, and Tales of Resistance
during the Pueblo Revolt Era,” American Antiquity 87, no. 1 [January
2022]: 19, 28-29, 36)
