Mexican X-Plainer: Mesoamerican Turkeys
Around Thanksgiving (though not JUST at that time), we should always reflect on Indigenous culture, food, and language, respecting and honoring Native Americans and Mesoamericans displaced or killed by conquest and colonization, rather than erasing them with false legends that glorify European arrival in the Americas.
Central to US feasts is the domesticated turkey (Meleagris gallopavo domesticus), a bird that originated in southern Mexico, bred from the most common wild turkey in that area, a subspecies of Meleagris gallopavo (the North American wild turkey).
The Nahua (Aztecs) called the wild turkey “huehxōlōtl” and the domesticated turkey “tōtolin.” In modern Mexican Spanish these have become “guajolote” and “totole” (the latter less common), which are used interchangeably.
Wild turkeys were also called “cuauhtōtolin,” literally “birds of the forest.” The more popular term, “huehxōlōtl,” means “big xōlōtl.” I know that isn’t helpful, but “xōlōtl” has multiple meanings: slave, canine double of the god Quetzalcoatl, monster, etc.—some with different origins, with linguistic evolution creating converging pronunciations. In this case, “xo-” appears to be a root that just means … turkey.
Sidebar.“Big monster” is a fun gloss, however, as Aztec myth tells us that, when the world was destroyed by fire, the humans of the third age were transformed into huehxōlōmeh — wild turkeys … or perhaps something more sinister, as suggested by the many modern Mexican legends about attacks by bird people.
The Spanish, however, called the native bird “pavo,” from the Latin “pavus,” originally meaning “peacock.” After the Conquest, the word shifted to signify “turkey,” and the peacock became the “pavo real” or “royal” turkey, heh. Compare to the Spanish verb pavonear (to strut like a peacock).
Guajolote and totole aren’t the only Native Mesoamerican words for turkey to persist in modern Spanish. In northern Mexico and the US, the term “cócono” or “coconito” is used for turkey, which sounds like it comes from the Nahuatl “cōconeh” or “young/baby [birds],” plural of “conētl.” Also common in some regions is “picho/piche,” which derives from “pich,” meaning “turkey” in several Mayan languages.
Note. The North American wild turkey should not be confused with the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata), known in Yucatec Mayan as “kúuts.” In Central America and Southern Mexico, it’s common to hear “chompipe” for this species, a loan word from Nawat “chumpi.”
Whatever we may call them, we should always remember that the Spanish took those domesticated turkeys to Europe, where the fowls spread eventually to England and were brought by the “pilgrims” to the US just as Conquest was killing off the native birds. Now, of course, they exist side-by-side with the wild turkeys native to North America.
It’s ironic and depressing that for so many US citizens the domesticated turkey has become a symbol of supposed peace and cooperation between European colonizers and Native Americans. In reality, its theft and reintroduction heralded future massacres and appropriation.
