Why do Americans eat turkey for Thanksgiving?

Because that's what the pilgrims ate with the Indians on the first Thanksgiving...or so our happy history tells us.

I'm not sure if the pilgrams actually ate turkey on the first Thanksgiving, but wild turkeys were very common in early America. It probably slowly became a tradition to eat turkey around this time of year, simply because it was a common game animal. In fact, wild turkeys were so common, Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird instead of the bald eagle! Perhaps if he had gotten his way, we wouldn't have turkey ever!

The legend tells us that the people at the first Thanksgiving celebrated by eating wild turkeys, a game bird that was common back east. The eastern seaboard was not the home of the buffaloes, they did not hunt them there. There are probably salmon there, and they may have eaten them too, but this late in the year, the salmon run would have been over. The pilgrims did not bring turkeys from England with them. They learned how to kill and cook them from the local NDN people

You can feed a lot more people with just one good-sized turkey than, say, a rock cornish hen.

Of course, with representatives of the Powhatan tribe (or whoever the Pilgrims encountered in 1621) sharing the table, they would likely have needed a few more turkeys on that table to go with all that maize...

Because the Pilgrams ate turkey (among other meat) at the first thanksgiving.

Who said so? Not al of them do!!! some of them prefer having several chickens than cooking a bulky huge turkey that can take forever to cook..... But as far as for the turkey .. its a tradition ...thast what we gave the native americans to show peace and harmony..... AND that day was called thx giving!!!!

I heard that because it was at the first thanksgiving and that it was an inexpensive food yet fed alot of people.

Thats what meet the pilgrims had most of. But for some reason deer meat,quail,and bufffolo did not make the mark for tradition.

So I am glad its turkey.....not deer.

tradition---it's what they ate at the first Thanksgiving like 400 years ago

At the time, there were hundreds of wild turkey running around ....