358 Wright, Early Records of the Wild Turkey. [j£}£ 



Occasionally, however, they would perch on the high limbs of the 

 trees, and then we had some shots at them. In the course of an 

 hour we killed four, ..." In his Travels 1834-1836, C. A. Murray 

 (1. c, p. 73) notices this form at Keokuk. In 1837, A. Wetmore 

 writes x " The game of Missouri, the ranks of which are thinned as 

 settlements advance, consists of. . . , turkeys etc." In Saline 

 County, he says "Turkeys and grouse here give animation to the 

 prairie scenery and furnish the table with some of the choicest 

 luxuries of life." Finally, in 1846, Wm. J. A. Bradford holds that 2 

 " The wild turkey is found in great numbers on the wooded bottom 

 lands" of the Upper Mississippi. 



Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and the Northwest. 



If we do not consider Coronado of the 16th century, the record 

 begins in 1724, when M. de Bourgmont made a trip from Fort 

 Orleans to the Missouris, Canzas and Padoucas. On the 16th of 

 October, 1724, he says 3 "Besides the larger game, these groves 

 (at River of the Canzas) afforded also a retreat to flocks of turkeys." 



About the beginning of the nineteenth century, Alexander Henry 

 writes of one of Big Belly Indians 4 "who had a turkey-cock's tail, 

 great numbers of which they get from the Schians, and which serve 

 them as fans." On the return, the Lewis and Clarke expedition 

 when passing down the Missouri River, records the turkey at the 

 mouth of the Platte River. 5 "At two in the afternoon we stopped 

 to hunt, and soon killed two deer and a turkey." Shortly after, 

 Pike takes a trip from a Pawnee Village through Kansas and 

 Colorado to Pike's Peak, October 1-November 30, 1806. At 

 Lamar he says 6 " killed one turkey, the first we have seen since we 

 left the Pawnees"; at Florence, " killed .... six turkeys"; at 

 Royal Gorge of the Arkansaw, "Heard 14 guns at camp. . . found 



1 Wetmore, Alphonse. Gazetteer of the State of Missouri. St. Louis, 1837, 

 pp. 29, 219. 



2 Bradford, Wm. J. A. Notes on the Northwest, etc. New York and London, 

 1846, p. 19. 



3 Du Pratz, M. Le Page, 1. c, p. 69. 



4 Coues, Elliott. The Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry and David 

 Thompson, 1799-1814. 3 vols. N. Y., 1897, Vol. I, p. 355. 



5 Gass, Patrick. 1. c, p. 260. 



« Pike, 1. c, Vol. II, pp. 442, 462, 463, 464, 471, 474. 



