Last week I was talking about Columbus history with Mayor Keith Gaskin, and he mentioned that on November 18 there would be the pardoning of a Thanksgiving Turkey in Columbus. That made me think about early Columbus and the turkey lore I have heard or read. That lore has roots in Alabama and Mississippi which go back for centuries, extending even into prehistoric times.
Turkey bones are often found at prehistoric Indian sites, and among the Choctaws and Chickasaws turkeys were more than just a food and feather source. The turkey was often associated with warriors and warfare. Gobbler spurs were used as arrow points and an imitation of a turkey gobble was even used as a war cry.
There is even a Choctaw legend of a large turkey strutting through some high grass and not noticing a turtle, stepping on it and breaking its shell. The angry turtle demanded the turkey repair his shell. The turkey responded that the turtle should learn to walk upright so he could be seen. When the turtle replied he could not do that, the turkey called on some ants to bring thread and repair the turtle’s shell. The ants brought colored thread and used it to repair the turtle’s shell. That colored thread is the reason that turtles have colored streaks on their shells today.
Though today’s turkey population has been expanding, it still does not compare with what was found by the Euro-Americans who moved into this area 200 years ago. In 1854, a Boston newspaper, Gleason’s Pictorial, described how in the bottom lands, along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, turkeys were usually found in “a band of from 70 to 80” and sometimes as many as 100 birds.
In 1816, Gideon Lincecum moved from Georgia to Tuscaloosa. Then in 1818 he and his family moved to near where people were forming a new settlement on the Military Road which was under construction. In the summer of 1819, he moved to that new settlement which had grown and became the town of Columbus. In the 1840s he moved again, chasing the edge of the frontier to Texas. Gideon enjoyed turkey hunting and often wrote about his hunts in Alabama, Mississippi and Texas.
When traveling with his brother from Georgia to Tuscaloosa, they awoke at one Alabama camp site and soon heard “the roar of the numerous wild gobblers…In all directions was to be heard nothing but one continuous roar.” As they left camp, they came across two big gobblers fighting, and Gideon shot one in the head. The other turkey continued thrashing about with the then-headless turkey, thinking he had conquered it himself. Lincecum’s brother watched for a moment before he shot the second turkey. The shots spooked about 20 deer that were unseen nearby. The deer panicked and ran right by the Lincecums. Gideon’s brother commented, “Well, we’ve been all our lives in what we thought good hunting countries, but this takes the dilapidated linen.”
Lincecum often used the leaf of the wild peach for a turkey call. In describing one hunt he stated, “I had the leaf of a wild peach, a most excellent leaf to yelp with, and I had been admiring how well I had been speaking Turkey with it.” He also found that the leaf of the elder was good for making a soft yelp.
In 1818, the Lincecums moved to the site that became Columbus. He first made a camp on the banks of the Tombigbee River near the present site of the Columbus Marina. At sunset on his first night there, he heard “heavy turkeys flying up to roost a little distance out.” There appeared to be at least 40 turkeys alighting in the trees. Lincecum was out at daybreak hunting them. Arriving at the trees in darkness, he sat down against the side of a tree and waited for daylight.
At first light he saw a huge turkey “on a low limb, not more than 30 feet from the ground.” Lincecum shot the large turkey and carried it back to his camp. He stated that “his weight when dressed was twenty-nine and a half pounds.” Before the year was gone, he said he had observed many other turkey just as large.
Gideon’s favorite hunting ground was a “string of ponds and lakes” which he called “White Slue.” It is now the Island across from Columbus. He described how in the slough’s cane breaks and cypress swamps could be found more game including turkeys, “than at any place I ever lived.” The remnants of White Slough can still be seen on the south part of the Island.
The Choctaw Indians had called White Slough “Shonk Colohenocoby” or “Crooked Cypress.” It was also one of their favorite hunting grounds. Its long association with Native American hunting, even pre-dating the Choctaw, was shown by the finding there of a 2,000-year-old small spear point embedded in a buried cypress knee during the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. In Columbus turkeys are not just a thanksgiving meal. Turkeys are also an important part of our history and heritage.
Lincecum’s hunting accounts can be found in Adventures of a Frontier Naturalist by Lincecum and Phillips, Texas A&M Press, 1994.
Rufus Ward is a local historian.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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