Much of what we know about the Jamestown colony was written by Captain John Smith, whose efforts preserved the colony from collapse（垮掉）and who in turn was preserved by the Indian “princess” Pocahontas. Smith’s accounts of the colony frequently mention turkeys as food, gifts, and objects of trade. In 1607, Smith wrote, to celebrate the first peace after the first armed fight, the Indians brought turkeys, bread and what they had, singing and dancing in celebration of friendship till they departed. Elsewhere Smith noted that the Indians made warm and beautiful cloaks（披风）from turkey feathers. Further north, as the Plymouth colony neared the end of its first year in 1621, Governor William Bradford also observed a great flock of wild turkeys, of which they took many.

　　Undoubtedly,

　　turkeys were among the fowls served at the first Thanksgiving dinner.

　　Despite those significant beginnings and Benjamin Franklin’s lobbying（游说）, the turkey lost to the bald eagle in the contest for American bird. And it is a loser in modern English slang, too. Since the 1920s, turkey has been a term for a play or movie that is a failure, and since the 1950s for a person who is not fit for his job. But though the turkey never succeeded in becoming the American symbol, it did become the American feast. Thanksgiving is Turkey Day, and the turkey has come into our language more than other birds. We never “talk eagle”, we “talk turkey” when we speak frankly.

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