Piasa/Piasa Bird

The Piasa is a monstrous creature from the legends of the Illiniwek Native Americans. Its name means “bird that devours man,” and its legend is well known in the region. It was famously depicted on an ancient petroglyph, which originally showed two creatures. This painting was described in the journals of Pére Marquette while he explored the Mississippi River. It was described as a hideous creature the size of a calf. It has also been described as large enough to pick up a full-grown deer in its talons. It had a head and horns like a goat with a man’s face, a tiger’s beard, and red eyes. It had an extremely long tail going above the body, twisting around the legs, and back under the body before ending in fish fins. It was painted red, green, and black with incredible detail. The story goes that when this creature got a taste for human flesh, it would eat nothing else. For a time, it took a new human victim every day. Eventually, a chief named Owatoga and six young warriors came up with a plan to kill it. They shot it with a lot of arrows, and it fell to its death over a bluff, after which they painted the petroglyph to mark the spot. White settlers didn’t find evidence of the creature and doubted its existence. A professor named John Russell went searching for caves in July 1836 to validate the story. His group discovered a cave with its floor entirely made of human bones. They searched more and found more caves equally filled with bones of what they guessed were thousands of victims. This proved it to him, and more have found the caves since then. No one has found the caves in more recent years, and the petroglyph is now hard to find as well.

Citations:

Taylor, Troy, et al. Weird Illinois: Your Travel Guide to Illinois’ Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. United States, Sterling, 2005.