Sobaheg for all!
Long before we linked ourselves by computers and social media, before we linked ourselves by voice, internal combustion and air travel, before we linked ourselves by steam — way back when we still relied on wind and sail — we also created a turkey link.
"Turkeys" came to Europe from two places, and in fact they were two distinct birds: Numida meagris or the African helmeted guinea fowl from Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa; and Meleagris gallopavo, the North American "turkeys" native to Mexico, the eastern half of the United States and southern Canada — birds probably first domesticated by the Aztecs some 2,400 years before Pilgrims arrived in North America to share a three-day feast with the Wampanoag Indians at Plymouth Rock, in November 1621.
By that time, Europeans had been eating guineas for a century or more after the Ottoman Empire had imported them from Madagascar to Istanbul, then exported them to Europe on a tide of war and trade in the 15th or 16th centuries. Even then, Europeans had begun referring to the Ottoman Empire as "Turkey," and to the African guineas as "turkey fowl."
Explorers who sailed west from Europe, meanwhile, carried the North American birds back home in the 16th or 17th centuries, calling them "turkeys" because they mistook them for African guinea fowl, which also have small heads and rounded bodies.
I happen to have some guineas hop-skipping around my yard with the ducks and chickens. They lay little mocha eggs the size of big walnuts and chatter in alarm like crazed crickets with bullhorns. So, I've been forced to think about their importance in our lives.
At first glance, it's not much. Should I harvest a couple for Thanksgiving dinner, perhaps — an unusual "turkey" twist on the traditional holiday fare? No, heaven forbid! And certainly not with my wife and son sitting down to dine at the same table.
How about relying on our guineas as avian watchdogs? They sure as hell make enough noise. But that's too imprecise. They chatter if a squirrel runs by at the same deafening volume they'd chatter if the Persian horde ran by.
What about their importance as icons of cultural progress — as lessons in how humans should behave?
Sounds a little pretentious but it makes some sense. If we didn't have guinea fowl from the Ottoman Empire we wouldn't have Turkey, which became a nation following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.
And if we didn't have Turkey, we wouldn't have a liberalized Islamic nation more European than not, nowadays — a member of NATO.
And if we didn't have an Islamic member of NATO, we wouldn't benefit from an obvious and powerful truth: Things work a lot better when you trade and get along — when you invite people to sit at your table — than when you don't.
The North American turkey, with five species, including Florida's wily Osceola, can teach us something, as well. Here's the lesson: It doesn't matter what you're eating together. It only matters that you're eating it. Together.
At the first Thanksgiving, however, turkeys were irrelevant. If they were on the menu at all, they weren't significant. The main course was probably venison, since the 90 or so Indians led by Chief Massasoit brought five deer, and William Bradford's 50 men contributed "fowl" — likely ducks and geese among others migrating in the New England autumn.
They'd raised a good first-year crop of greens, beans and turnips, records show, and they had onions and corn, but little sugar. Supplies from Britain had mostly run out, so nuts and berries, including native cranberries, wouldn't have been sweetened.
They also had pumpkins —not the big orange orbs popularized by Irish immigrants more than two centuries later, but squash. And they likely ate a lot of fish and shellfish, while digging into big helpings of sobaheg, the Wampanoag word for stew, according to Wampanoag historian Linda Coombs, an expert in the bicultural history of the Plymouth colony.
Consisting of just about anything available, sobaheg could include meats, squash, beans, nuts onions, corn and roots (potatoes would not become part of the American diet for a century to come, or more).
So why bother with turkey at Thanksgiving?
Traditionalists should be eating sobaheg on this holiday — only after proclaiming a single Latin truth over the bounty: E. pluribus unum.
That's the sobaheg recipe, after all: Out of many ingredients, one dish. You can find the recipe at plimoth.org/for-students/activities games/historic-cooking.
It's our national character, even in divisive times: out of many, one.
But the first Thanksgiving failed to meet the standards of e. pluribus unum, even if guests were eating sobaheg.
The event was most likely male only (the women cooked), a goodwill affair "cementing a military alliance," in the words of Robert Krulwich, an NPR commentator.
As for Meleagris gallopavo, about 250 years would pass before Abe Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863 and cultural cheerleaders made the native turkey prominent in ways no early Americans could have imagined.
Norman Rockwell proved to be one of the greatest turkey promoters who ever lived, completing his famous painting of Vermonters (including members of his own family) celebrating a Thanksgiving feast in November 1942. The painting appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1943, with the title "Freedom From Want."
So now I wonder: What if Rockwell had known the history and decided to paint sobaheg instead of a golden roast turkey at the bountiful center of that scene?
Then he might have sketched in a couple of Wampanoags, an Ottoman Turk and an African or two to go with the Vermonters, don't you think? ¦
This column was originally published in 2018.
