Your Guide to an Authentic Thanksgiving

Turkey might be traditional fare at Thanksgiving, but it’s probably not historical. If the Pilgrims ate any birds at all, historian Tracy McKenzie writes in his fascinating book The First Thanksgiving, they were probably waterfowl. William Bradford remembered that there were “swarms and multitudes” of ducks, swans, herons, and cranes. There were, said a Dutch West India Company agent, lots of turkeys too, but they had “very long legs” and could run “extraordinarily fast.” The Pilgrims probably didn’t catch many of them.