20-3-1985
Dear
Mr Plant,
Thank
you for your letter of 20/2/85. I have been thinking it over for a while. And
I remembered an article on Araucana in the National
Geographic Magazine of September 1948 written by Vosburgh under the name Easter
egg chickens. The Author wrote it because he was fascinated by a earlier
large article in the NGM of April 1927 The
races of Domestic Fowl, 30 pages, by Jull with 67 illustrations and 29
paintings from live by Hashime Murayama. One of the paintings shows 3
Araucanas, rumpless with ear tufts, laying blue eggs.
In
the 1948 article it’s written about research on the breed by Dr Alexander
Wetmore, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Vice-Chairman of the
National Geographic Society’s Research
Committee. I quote:
“The
origin of the blue-egg-laying characteristics is unknown. One story is that
chickens which landed from a wrecked vessel crossed with the Tinamou, a small
South American member of the ostrich tribe, which is virtually tailless and
lays colored eggs. However Dr Wetmore, a distinguished ornithologist told me
that he believed, this would be biologically impossible. He is convinced that
the Araucana like all other American breeds, is derived from chickens imported
to the New World from the Old.”
One
of these days I read The Chicken Book
written by Page Smith (historian) and Charles Daniel (biologist) in 1975. The
story these Americans wrote on Araucana is very interesting. I’ll quote:
“We
have already assigned the earliest chickens, at least tentatively, to India,
the Chinese mainland, Southeast Asia, and, by diffusion over sea-lanes to the
Pacific islands. But by the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico the Incas
were thoroughly familiar with chickens and the name of the last Inca,
Atahualpa, was the Quechua name for chicken. Thus evidence and common sense
are strongly on the side of the pre-Columbian
chicken. The only question that remains (and one that probably cannot be
answered with any certainty) is whether the chicken was indigenous to America,
that is to say whether birds closely related to the chicken were domesticated
by tribes of the Americas or whether they had been brought across the ocean by
Polynesian sailors or even, perhaps, by the Egyptians themselves.
In
support of the indigenous chicken it
might be pointed out that grouse and chickens are so closely related as to be
almost indistinguishable in their bone structure. Certainly, the South
American Araucanas have a decidedly grouselike appearance.
In
addition the Araucanas bear a striking resemblance to Asiatic breeds. The pure
Araucanas are rumpless and melanoid (black in pigmentation). I suspect that
chickens were in fact brought to the west coast of South America by venturers
whose voyages are unrecorded in any historical annals. These birds may very
well have mated with native grouse.
What
is most striking of all, and perhaps gives the strongest support to the theory
of indigenous South American chickens, is the fact that the Araucanas are
unique among breeds of chicken in the world for their green and blue eggs.
Moreover they take their name from the ruggedly independent Indians of the
Chilean mountains who remained remarkably free of western influences until the
end of the nineteenth century, when the first Araucana chickens were
identified.
Perhaps
the last word can be left to José de Acosta, a Jesuit missionary who wrote in
1590: "I must say I was astonished at the Fowls which without doubt were
kept there even before the coming of the Spaniards, this being clear by the
fact that the natives have names of their own for them, calling a hen gualpa
and an egg ronto."
A
later visitor noted: "In the first accounts we have of the conquest, we
frequently hear of hens and the name leads us to believe that they were like
our own; this, however is not so and only the birds of Paraguay and Tucuman
were somewhat similar to ours."
You
want me to comment your theory on Araucanas. It is a good theory but I also
like the theory in the Chicken Book.
It is possible to cross a chicken and a common pheasant and have fertile
descendants. So, why not a grouse x chicken cross. It is rare and it is
possible to get infertile birds, but there are crosses which proofed to be
fertile.
The
ISBN number of the Chicken book is
0-86547-067-7 and the price is 12 dollar.
In
the old Dutch standard, which I quote earlier, the Araucana are listed under
wild fowl. This list covers G.bankiva, G.lafayettei, G.sonnerati, G.varius,
G.giganteus and Araucana. I think to consider Araucanas an original wild
breed, which is crossed with Asiatic and Spanish domesticated fowls is also a
good theory. You know that the fauna on the different continents is not equal
in America, Africa and Australia the development of the fauna is not equal to
the development on Eurasia each continent has an own fauna and therefore South
American chickens can have developed on their own way and differ from other
chickens.
I
have the first eggs of the season in the incubator but in spite of the date it
is not spring here. We had some snow this morning but now it melted.
Nice
that you have your Easter shows and meetings in Australia. Here it is a quiet
time, but this week I’ll talk about bantams with slides at the poultry club
here.
Sincerely,
and have a good time there at the other side.