See the Legendary Piasa Bird of Alton, Illinois

A monster a week was delivered by the mid-1970's single-season TV show "Kolchak: The Night Stalker", ranging from alien to werewolf to rakshasa. Had the show, now a cult favorite, gone to a second season, plans were planning on leading off with the Piasa Bird, a legendary man-eating creature described by the Illini Indians of Southern Illinois,

The Piasa Bird's painted image can be found on the bluffs above Alton, Illinois today, overlooking the Mississippi River, as it has for hundreds of years past. The original was unfortunately blasted away during quarrying in the last half of the 19th Century and no one really knows what precisely the image looked like. The likeness painted on the bluffs today is guesswork based on descriptions.

The first description was provided by Father Jacques Marquette who first encountered the startling image of the Piasa staring down from the bluffs in 1673 near present-day Alton, 30 miles directly north of St Louis where the Mississippi River begins running east and west.

He specifically described two Piasa images, both carved into the bluff and painted. As the years passed, the limestone bluffs crumbled and collapsed, taking one of the images with it. Today, Marquette's discovery of the Piasa Bird is recalled as that of a single creature.

In his journal, Marquette, writing about the images, wrote "They are as large as a calf, have horns on their heads like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face somewhat like a man's, a body covered with scales, and a tail so long that it winds all around the body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a fish's tale. Green, red and black are the three colors composing the picture." Marquette made a sketch of the images, but the sketch was regrettably lost.

ORIGINS OF THE PIASA

So where did these oddly depicted creatures come from? The Illini who lived in the area when the French "black robes" like Marquette arrived had their own origin tales but no solid information about where exactly they came from. The Piasa could be have been left by the mound-building Mississippian culture, but no one is certain.