Turkeys Befriend a Girl: Turkey Husbandry, Ceremonialism, and Tales of Resistance during the Pueblo Revolt Era

From Basketmaker II to Pueblo II (200 BC–AD 1150), turkey husbandry flourished among Ancestral Pueblos inhabiting the northern and southern San Juan areas (300 BC–AD 1250) and the Rio Grande Valley (AD 1250– 1700) due to the ritual-symbolic importance of turkey feathers to rainmaking ideology. As primary caregivers, Ancestral Puebloan women's long-lasting social bond with domesticated turkeys was disrupted by Spanish maize and textile tribute (encomienda) systems and demands on Native labor (repartimiento) of the mid-1600s, a major factor contributing to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Despite the Spanish assault on their culture, Native people clandestinely practiced kachina religion by reusing turkey feather ceremonial objects, seeking refuge in ancestral mesa-top villages, and repurposing Spanish ecclesiastical materials as part of a pan-Pueblo resistance and revitalization movement. This study examines a previously overlooked form of Native resistance to Franciscan conversion efforts—“turkey girl” tales that appropriated and repurposed a Spanish religious folktale. Evidence suggests that these tales were authored by Pueblo Revolt–era war captains who attended Franciscan mission schools around the 1630s. To varying degrees, these “turkey girl” tales express nativist resistance to Franciscan conversion efforts, commitment to revitalization ideology, and pan-Pueblo ethnogenesis.