The reproduced painting of the Piasa Bird, on the bluffs half a mile northwest of the downtown area, is reached by following Broadway along the base of the bluff, but is best viewed from the river.
Paintings of the Piasa Bird in this location, first mentioned in Pere Marquette’s account of his trip down the Mississippi in 1673, have been the basis for several fantastic legends of Indian origin. The pictures that Marquette saw were blasted away during quarrying operations in 1870, and the present reproduction was made in 1934 with funds raised by private subscription. Marquette thus described the pictures:
As we were descending the river we saw high rocks with hideous monsters painted on them, and upon which the bravest Indians dare not look. They are as large as a calf, with head and horns like a goat; their eyes red; beard like a tiger; and a face like a man’s. Their tails are so long that they pass over their heads and between their fore legs, under their belly, and ending like a fish’s tail. They are painted red, green, and black.
The next account follows Marquette’s description closely, but mentions only one bird. The Alton Evening Telegraph of September 28, 1836, gave what was perhaps the first published account of the story of the Piasa bird. In this version, the popularly accepted one, the Piasa bird lived in a cave in the bluffs, and came winging down the river to carry off any Indians it encountered.
Chief Quatoga of the Illinois prayed to the Great Manitou for some means of delivering his people from this scourge and was told that the arrows of Quatoga’s tribe alone could kill the monster. Accordingly, the chief exposed himself on the bluff and hid 20 of his warriors in the bushes behind him. When the bird swooped down on him, the warriors shot it with poisoned arrows, and it fell screaming into the river. The writer of the newspaper story goes on to say naively that he had observed the supposed cave-home of the Piasa, and found it ample to house such a monster.
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