362 Wright, Early Records of the Wild Turkey. [july 



turkeys." Finally, in 1868, Zincke finds that 1 "As to feathered 

 game; on lucky days you may get a wild turkey," in the Rocky 

 Mts. 



Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and the Southwest. 



In this, the last section to be considered, the turkey has always 

 been a familiar form from Coronado's day to the present. In 

 1723, Bernard de la Harpe finds it in the land about the Red River 

 and asserts that the country of the Arkansas and Tayas has an 

 abundance of turkeys. 2 



Some hundred years later, 1818, Schoolcraft remarks 3 the 

 cheapness of wild turkeys at 25 cents in the White River country 

 of Arkansaw Territory, and, in 1817, Brown (1. c, p. 174) tells how 

 "50 miles from its mouth (Grand Saline or Newsewketonga) the 

 prairie grass is encrusted with salt; the Indians collect it by 

 scraping it off the prairie with a turkey's wing, into a trencher." 

 The following year, 1819, Thos. Nuttall in "Travels into the 

 Arkansas Territory" discusses the feather mantles of the Osage 

 Indians. 4 "Nearly all those whom De Soto found inhabiting 

 Florida and Louisiana, on either side of the Mississippi, .... 

 dressed themselves in woven garments made of .... ; and in colder 

 seasons of the year, they wore coverings of feathers, chiefly those 

 of the turkey. The same dresses were still employed in the time 

 of Du Pratz. These feather mantles were, within the recollection 

 of the oldest men, once used by the Cherokees, as I learnt whilst 

 among them. There is, therefore, nothing extraordinary in the 

 discovery of these garments around the bodies which had been 

 interred in the nitre caves of Kentucky. Presents of these ' man- 

 tels ' as they are called by Purchas, now superceded by European 

 blankets, were perpetually offered De Soto, throughout the course 

 of his expedition, and are still made use of by the natives of the 

 north west coast." 



In the southwestern country, the Long expedition 1S19-1S20, 

 encounters the turkey frequently. In the Arkansas River system, 



i Zincke, T. B. Last Winter in the United States. London, 1868, p. 250. 



» French, B. F. 1. c, Part III, pp. 69, 74. 



3 Schoolcraft, H. R. A View of the Lead Mines, .... p. 251. 



' Early Western Travels. XIII, pp. 258-259 (orig. pp. 193-194). 



