Two Ladies

The two women who live here with us on our fireplace mantel would like to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. 
 

The tall mother wrapped in her rich blue woven blanket and cradling her baby is a Pueblo woman. Her name is Xochitl. She tells us that long before the pilgrims ate turkeys with the natives in New England, Tewa natives here in the southwest were cultivating turkeys, or pindi, the native Tewa word for turkey.

The archeological evidence shows that native groups were keeping turkeys for food and for feathers that made downy winter blankets long before Spanish contact. And the evidence shows they kept turkeys as pets, even giving some of them honored burials.

I'm sure they never ate cranberry sauce with their turkey feasts, and as a long time New Englander I am appalled. But they had other good side dishes of corn and beans and surely berries too. 

The kneeling woman is a New Mexican Spanish doña decked out in her embroidered silks. Her name is Margarita Rosalia de la Vega. She too ate turkey here in the new world, in Mexico and in the northern territory of Santa Fe. In Spanish turkey is pava, and the good Spanish lady probably also had corn, beans and berries with her feast.

These two don't talk to each other much, at least not while I'm around. But at night I hear whisperings, and the accents are unmistakable. 

Pindi. Pava. Turkey. Giving thanks across centuries of conflict, and across centuries of cooperation and harmony and good food.

     🦃