The Pilgrims at Plymouth most likely encountered and ate the Eastern wild turkey (a subspecies of wild turkey native to New England), not the broad- breasted domestic turkeys common on modern Thanksgiving tables.

Quick Scoop

  • The bird available around Plymouth in 1621 was the wild turkey native to the forests and clearings of what is now the northeastern United States, especially Massachusetts.
  • Contemporary colonial sources, such as Governor William Bradford, mention a “great store of wild turkies” in the autumn of 1621, indicating that these wild birds were abundant and commonly hunted food.
  • These wild turkeys were slimmer, darker, and more athletic than modern domestic birds, able to run quickly and fly well, and would have had deeper, gamier-tasting meat compared with today’s selectively bred table turkeys.

What Type of Turkey?

  • The most likely type was the Eastern wild turkey, the subspecies historically ranging across New England and much of the eastern woodlands, which aligns with descriptions of “very large” dark-feathered turkeys in early colonial accounts.
  • Domesticated turkeys of European stock trace back to Mexican turkeys brought to Europe and later reintroduced, but those European-bred domestic birds became common in New England later in the 17th century, after the time of the first harvest celebration.

Was Turkey Definitely on the Menu?

  • The only eyewitness account of the 1621 harvest celebration mentions “venison and fowl” but does not list turkey by name, so historians cannot say with absolute certainty that turkey was served at that specific meal.
  • However, given that wild turkey was abundant locally and explicitly noted as plentiful that fall, many historians consider it probable that some of the “fowl” included wild turkey alongside ducks and geese.

How Those Turkeys Differ From Today’s

  • Early descriptions say these wild turkeys were larger than English domestic turkeys of the time, dark in plumage but white in flesh, often found in large flocks feeding on acorns, berries, and farmed corn.
  • Modern supermarket turkeys are typically broad-breasted domestic strains bred for oversized breast meat and are heavier, less agile, and unable to fly like the wild birds the Pilgrims would have hunted.

Forum-Style Takeaway

If the Pilgrims carved a “Thanksgiving turkey,” it would have looked and tasted more like a lean, dark, fast-flying Eastern wild turkey than the huge, pale domestic bird people eat today.

TL;DR: The Pilgrims most likely encountered and ate Eastern wild turkeys native to New England forests—lean, dark, agile birds—rather than the modern broad-breasted domestic turkeys associated with today’s Thanksgiving.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.