Piasa

The Piasa ( PY-ə-saw) or Piasa Bird (aka Paillissa, Piesa) is a later name applied to the creature[s] from Native American mythology depicted in a mural painted by Native Americans high on cliffsides above the Mississippi River. Its original location was at the end of a chain of limestone bluffs in Madison County, Illinois, at present-day Alton, Illinois. Contemporary sketch of one of the beasts, which is wingless (and matching the description of a scaly quadruped with a man-like face and a long tail terminating in fishlike fins) is identifiable as the underwater panther type. A second mural site depicting tritons (mermen) was also rumored. Later string of reports claimed the mural was still well preserved and visible upto the first half of the 19th century, and claimed to be called "piesa" in 1812. A painting published 1857 and a sketch published 1887 (claimed drawn 1825) purported to depict the creature with wings added, but many folklorists adjudge the eyewitnesses not to be earnest, deeming the attached legend of the chieftain Ouatoga (who fended his tribe from the bird, protected by a divine invisible shield) to be fakelore, i.e., a piece of fiction by John Russell (1836, 1848), with varying versions of this folktale explainable as works of other fabricators, or modified retellings collected orally from residents where Russell's tale had circulated. A separate legend, contending that a monster bird took sides in a historic tribal conflict between the local natives was published by Perry A. Armstrong (1887). The wall where the original paintings existed at Alton was probably destroyed ca. 1850s. The mural has been restored with replicas a number of times in the 20th century (image right).