Home » General Discussion Topics » Top Topic 's » CLIPPING THE PIASA BIRD’S WINGS
 CLIPPING THE PIASA BIRD’S WINGS [message #307] |
Mon, 09 April 2007 02:45  |
|
CLIPPING THE PIASA BIRD’S WINGS
by
John J. Dunphy
(published in the Volume 9, Number 60 issue of Ancient American)
When a friend told me that the Piasa (pronounced pie’-a-saw) Bird was listed inthe on-line Encyclopedia Mythica, I rushed home to look it up. As a life-long resident of Alton, Illinois - the site of the Piasa Bird legend - and ardent folklorist, I’ve taken a scholarly interest in the tale and wanted to see if the Encyclopedia Mythica entry had gotten it right.
Alas it hadn’t.
The entry began by noting that Piasa refers to petroglyphs visible on a rock near Alton that were first described by the Jesuit missionary Juliette Marquette in the 16th century. First of all, the depictions were pictographs - paintings on a rock wall - rather than petroglyphs, which are carvings on rock. The missionary in question was named Jacques Marquette, and the year that he viewed those mysterious pictographs was 1673 - that’s the seventeenth century, not the sixteenth.
Gerald Musinsky, the entry’s author, further notes that the term Piasa is "probably idiomatic for ‘the Bird...’ or ‘that Bird...’ from the phrase ‘the bird that devours men.’ " He continues that "Legends recount Piasa attacks on Miamis chieftains turning the tide of an inter-tribal battle with the Illini and Michigamie." Musinsky mentions another legend that "concerns the vengeance of Wassatigo (Ouatogo) who slew one after his betrothed fell prey to the beast."
As one who has researched the origin of the Piasa Bird legend for some years now, I must challenge Mr. Musinsky’s contention that the term "Piasa" was idiomatic for "the Bird," "that Bird," or any other article combined with Bird. My reason for this is quite simply: the pictographs seen by Marquette depicted no bird of any kind!
Let’s start at the beginning. When Marquette and his companion, Louis Jolliet, explored the area along the Mississippi River, they discovered two astonishing pictographs on a bluff - not a "rock," - as Mr. Musinsky states, near the present site of Alton. These "monsters," as Marquette referred to them in his journal, were
"as large as a calf; they 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 so long a tail that it winds all around
the body..."
Noting that the images were painted in green, red and black, Marquette speculated that:
"...these 2 monsters are so well-painted that
we cannot believe that any savage is their author,
for good painters in France would find it
difficult to paint so well..."
Please note that this eyewitness description of the pictographs contains no mention of wings nor does it even vaguely suggest the notion that these creatures were representations of birds. Neither Marquette nor Jolliet’s journals of this expedition make any mention of Indian legends that explain the pictographs’ significance. Ironically, it was a nineteenth century white writer who transformed the creatures into winged demons that carried off hapless Native Americans.
John Russell of Bluffdale, Illinois heard of the long-vanished paintings while teaching at Alton Seminary in 1834. His article, "The Piasa: An Indian Tradition of Illinois," appeared in the August 1836 issue of The Family Magazine; or The Monthly Abstract of General Knowledge. Signed only with the initials "J.R." the article was reprinted in several Illinois newspapers later that year.
"Many thousand moons before the arrival of the pale faces," as Russell melodramatically began his story, the Indians of this region were terrorized by a fierce winged demon that they called the Piasa, which Russell claimed was an Illini word
meaning "the bird that devours men." Modern scholars, however, have long argued that the Illini language contained no such word. Ironically, "piasa" means cat in the Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo language!
Russell claimed that the Piasa was so huge that it could carry off a deer in its talons but, once having tasted human flesh, it would prey on nothing else. Entire villages were nearly depopulated, and the Illini realized that the Piasa must be destroyed.
Ouatoga, an Illini chief, prayed to the Great Spirit for guidance. The Indian deity appeared to him in a dream and directed Ouatoga to select 20 of his best warriors, arm them with bows and poisoned arrows and conceal them in a designated place. Ouatoga, acting as live bait, stood on a bluff to attract the Piasa.
As the bird swooped down to seize Ouatoga, the 20 braves emerged from cover and shot their arrows into the Piasa. Screaming in pain, the Piasa flew to the other side of the Mississippi and died. The Indians then painted the Piasa’s image on the bluff to commemorate their victory over this predator.
Russell astutely saved the most incredible portion of this tale for the conclusion. In March of 1836, he claimed, a guide led him to a bluff cave that long had been associated with the Piasa tradition. There they discovered "the floor of this cave throughout its whole extent was a mass of human bones. Sculls {sic} and other bones were mingled together in the utmost confusion...we dug to the depth of three or four feet in every quarter of the cavern and still we found nothing but bones. The remains of thousands must have been deposited here..."
Russell’s insinuation that he had stumbled upon the monster’s lair in the presence of a witness greatly augmented the story’s credibility, and it soon captured the imagination of nearly everyone in the region. And it was an engaging yarn, to be sure. As Native American lore, however, Russell’s yarn was about as authentic as those silly toy tomahawks wielded by Atlanta Braves fans at baseball games.
Modern scholars believe that Russell drew upon a number of sources when constructing his story, particularly the 1833 autobiography of Black Hawk, the great Sauk warrior, who reminisced about spending many happy days on Diamond Island for "a good spirit lived in a cave in the rocks. He was white, with large wings like a swan’s, but ten times larger..."
Could this have given Russell the idea for another supernatural creature who dwelled in a cave? Oh, incidentally, Black Hawk also stated that his father’s name was Py-e-sa.
Yet another possible source for Russell’s legend was the so-called Bone Cave of Grafton, Illinois, a small town just up river a bit from Alton. Unlike Black Hawk’s giant swan, the Bone Cave was a very real natural phenomenon that was described by William McAdams in his 1887 work Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley.
McAdams chillingly noted that the Bone Cave contained many bones, "some of which had been those of human beings. Unfortunately, the Bone Cave was evidently quarried away around the turn of the twentieth century, putting it forever beyond the pale of further investigation.
While this is the version of the Piasa legend that is most familiar to area residents, there are several other variants that date from the nineteenth century. A citizen of Alton, who signed his or her article with only the initial "L" published a radically different version of the Piasa tale in the April 20-27 editions of the Alton Telegraph and Democratic Review in 1844.
L denounced Russell’s version of the Piasa legend as a "gross fable" and claimed that the tradition had originated with the Potawatomi tribe rather than the Illini. According to L, the monster was slain by twins named Peasayah and Onecaw who had been born of a virgin called Wacoulla.
In L’s account, the Piasa is described as resembling a hippopotamus with branching horns rather than a monstrous bird. The twins supposedly killed it with metal lances instead of bows and arrows. Peasayah then skinned it and traced its outline on the bluff - hence, the mysterious figures seen by Marquette and Jolliet.
The Piasa mystery became even further middled when Russell published another account of the legend in the October 28, 1847 edition of the {Springfield} Illinois Journal that differed markedly from his earlier tale. Now the Piasa was a giant condor that was slain by a lone Indian named Alpeora rather than Outagoa and 20 warriors.
As though to exasperate his readers beyond all endurance, Russell returned to his original version of the Piasa in a story published in the July 14, 1848 issue of the Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate. Significantly, however, he chose to omit any reference to a cave littered with human "sculls" and bones.
One Martin Beem offered yet another version of the Piasa in his "The Piasa-Bird: A Legend of the Illinois," which was published in the June 14, 1873 edition of the {Springfield} Illinois State Register. Beem’s account was quite similar to Russell’s first version, differing only in that the Illini and Ottawa tribes were presented as allies, the chief who offered himself as live bait was named Lin-cah-tello and 25 warriors emerged from cover to bring down the Piasa.
To his credit, however, he ventured into originality by introducing a Lover’s Leap angle. It seemed that Lin-cah-tello was the grief-stricken father of a maiden who sometime earlier had leaped from the bluff with her lover.
Another intriguing version of the Piasa came from the pen of P.A. Armstrong in his 1887 book The Piasa, Or the Devil Among the Indians. Now the Piasa was supposed to have been a tradition of the Miami tribe as well as the Illini. This time there were two winged monsters, a detail that at least was consistent with the fact that Marquette and Jolliet saw two pictographs on the bluff.
Armstrong contended that the Piasa possessed a voracious appetite for deer, elk and even young buffalo but never menaced Indians until the Miamis were engaged in a devastating battle with the Mestchegamies (also spelled, according to Armstrong, as Michigamies). Suddenly, the mighty birds swooped down from the sky and carried off two Miami chiefs, leaving that tribe terrorized and demoralized.
The Mestchegamies thought the monsters’ arrival was an omen from the Great Spirit and pressed against their Miami foes with renewed vigor until victory was theirs.
The slaughter was ruthless. Many Miamis were driven into the Mississippi itself, where they drowned.
Armstrong ominously noted, however, that "instead of a blessing," the birds’ snatching of the Miami chiefs "proved to be a terrible curse" to the victorious Mestchegamies. The Piasa Birds now "seemed to have a special taste for Indian flesh [including, it would seem, that of the Mestchegamies!] and would touch no other." The victorious tribe nevertheless painted the creatures’ images on the bluff: perhaps in gratitude for their battle appearance, or perhaps as an attempt to appease the birds into sparing Indian lives.
Like some intellectuals of his day, Armstrong postulated that the Piasa Bird actually had existed and might have been some dinosaur that still dwelled in the Western Hemisphere when the ancestors of the Indians migrated to the New World. Other theories are no less intriguing - and off the wall.
One of my campy favorites was proposed by Henry Lee Stoddard in his "The Piasa or ‘Thunderbird,’ " which appeared in the October 1927 issue of The Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. He argued that the pictographs were symbols representing the four seasons.
Stoddard observed that the colors green, red, orange and black were frequently used to represent the seasons in Old World art: green symbolizing spring, red depicting summer, orange for fall and black signifying winter. True, orange was missing in Marquette’s description of the paintings but that didn’t deter Mr. Stoddard one bit.
He also saw signs of the Zodiac in the Piasa. Those deer horns were really the horns of Taurus the Bull (the Zodiac sign for April 21 to May 20) and represented spring. Its "beard like a tiger’s" signified Leo the Lion (July 23 to August 22) and symbolized summer. The "fish’s tail" might well have been the tail of a scorpion and thus represented Scorpio (October 23 to November 22), while the Piasa’s "face somewhat like a man’s" represented Aquarius the Waterman (January 20 to February 19) and winter.
Stoddard thought any North American paintings that demonstrated such a sophisticated knowledge of the Zodiac suggested an extensive system of communication between the world’s continents must have existed "not less than 2450 B.C.E." He also contended that the "prehistoric races of the American continent were not what [are] commonly called ‘Indians’ " and concluded that the earthen mounds and artwork of pre-Columbian America were actually created by a mysterious lost race.
Here, Stoddard essentially is echoing Marquette’s sentiment that the original pictographs were "so well-painted that we cannot believe any savage is their author’ for good painters in France would find it difficult to paint so well..." Too many Europeans and Americans of European descent refused to believe that North American Indians were capable of achieving any appreciable degree of civilization. Therefore, they reasoned that the magnificent earthen mounds (some even fashioned in the shape of animals!) and artwork that so astonished explorers and early settlers must have been created by some race that preceded the primitive Indians.
Some even thought that this lost race had vanished precisely because it had been annihilated by Indians! Such tortured reasoning provided additional justification for the genocide waged against Native Americans. After all, the racists smugly concluded, the Indians were just getting what they deserved for wiping out their noble predecessors!
But why did Native Americans paint those bizarre images on the Alton bluffs? Modern scholars remain divided, although some intriguing theories have been bantered around. Archaeologist Jerome Jacobson posited that the pictographs depicted an underwater panther, a familiar Indian deity, in a paper presented in 1986 at the annual meeting of the Alton Museum of History and Art. While Russell might well have lifted the name Piasa from Black Hawk’s autobiography, Jacobson’s theory would neatly justify calling the creature a piasa since, as we have seen, the term indeed meant cat in Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo language!
In the final analysis, we can be really sure of only one thing: contrary to the prejudices of Marquette, Stoddard and their ilk, those images were painted by Native Americans. Two works of such power and imagination that even a Jesuit missionary was forced to concede that the most gifted European artists would have been challenged to equal them were painted by a culture branded inferior and barbaric.
Oui, Pere Marquette: a "savage" was indeed their author. And that’s no myth.
____________________________________________________________ ___________
A note concerning sources: In addition to the works cited in the body of the text, the author also utilized Everett Sparks’ book In Search of the Piasa (Alton Museum of History and Art, 1990) and Wayne Temple’s article "The Piasa: Fact or Fiction?" (Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Autumn 1956 issue)
************************************************************ *****************************************
For information on John J. Dunphy, who wrote this article, go to www.johndunphy.com and www.secondreadingbookshop.com
[Updated on: Mon, 09 April 2007 02:50]
Ask Not what your Country can do for you, but what you can do for your country? The answer to this question is very simple "be an informed and active citizen"
|
|
|
| Re: CLIPPING THE PIASA BIRD’S WINGS [message #308 is a reply to message #307] |
Mon, 09 April 2007 03:45  |
  |
Piasa 
Messages: 292
Registered: January 2007
Location: Bluff's over the Mississi... |
|
|
|
I met Mr. Dunphy a few weeks ago, and he struck me as being a most effervescent and personable fellow, and his article certainly brings the myth of the Piasa back down to earth, but I doubt that it will harm the myth and legend surrounding the Piasa bird all that much.
There are too many older people like me who have grown up with the legend, and although we generally realize that the Piasa bird as displayed on the side of the bluff is a myth it has become a familiar part of our heritage that we are comfortable with.
One thing Mr. Dunphy and I spoke of, that is of some interest to me is pictures; I find it difficult to imagine that there are not more photographs of the Piasa floating around.
Certainly there are more photographs sitting in drawers or closets some where, perhaps even some grainy old video and I think it would be nice if we found and shared them as well as some of our memories of this mythical creature we have come to know as the Piasa Bird.
If anyone has any photos they wish to share feel free to contact me or one of the moderators here and we will be happy to post them for the public, or to help you establish an online album. Until then here are a couple of pictures I have found on the web over the last few years, I have no Idea where they came from perhaps Mr. Dunphy does, and will share that with us.
Politicians, the other white meat!
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
Current Time: Tue Sep 07 18:32:30 CDT 2010
Total time taken to generate the page: 0.23934 seconds
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
