page_title: Piasa
section_title: John Russell account
hierarchical_section_title: Piasa / History / John Russell account
caption_attribution_description: English: Restored Piasa Bird carving along the Mississippi River near the junction with the Illinois River.
context_page_description: The Piasa or Piasa Bird is a Native American dragon depicted in one of two murals painted by Native Americans on bluffs 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. The original Piasa illustration no longer exists; a newer 20th-century version, based partly on 19th-century sketches and lithographs, has been placed on a bluff in Alton, Illinois, several hundred yards upstream from its origin. The location of the present-day mural is at 38.898055, -90.19915. The limestone rock quality on the new site is unsuited for holding an image, and the painting must be regularly restored. The original site of the painting was a high-quality layer of lithographic limestone, which was predominantly quarried away in the late 1870s by the Mississippi Lime Company.
context_section_description: The monster depicted in the mural was first referred to as the "Piasa Bird" in an article published c. 1836 by John Russell of Bluffdale, Illinois. John Russell was an imaginative professor of Greek and Latin at Shurtleff College, Upper Alton, Illinois. The article was entitled "The Tradition of The Piasa" and Russell claimed the origin of the word to be from a nearby stream: "This stream is the Piasa. Its name is Indian, and signifies, in the Illini, "The Bird That Devours Men." (The original Piasa Creek ran through the main ravine in downtown Alton, and was completely covered by huge drainage pipes around 1912.) According to the story published by Russell, the creature depicted by the painting was a huge bird that lived in the cliffs. Russell claimed that this creature attacked and devoured people in nearby Indian villages shortly after the corpses of a war gave it a taste for human flesh. The legend claims that a local Indian chief, named Chief Ouatoga, managed to slay the monster using a plan given to him in a dream from the Great Spirit. The chief ordered his bravest warriors to hide near the entrance of the Piasa Bird's cave, which Russell also claimed to have explored. Ouatoga then acted as bait to lure the creature out into the open. As the monster flew down toward the Indian chief, his warriors slew it with a volley of poisoned arrows. Russell claimed that the mural was painted by the Indians as a commemoration of this heroic event.
  Some sources report that this account was simply a story created by John Russell. In the book Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley ...  Chapter 2, 1887 by W. McAdams, the author says he contacted John Russell and Russell admitted the story was fabricated.
  The bird imagery is not reported in Father Marquette's description, which makes no mention of wings. It is also possible that Marquette's description and Russell's account were both accurate for their respective times.  The image may have been repainted at some point between 1673 and 1836 to revise its appearance and iconography.
  When contemporary historians, folklorists, and tourism promoters are looking for a narrative description of the story behind the Piasa "Bird", they often rely on Russell's account. This colorful version of the tale can be adapted to allow a wide range of interpretation and allow other cities and counties to claim promotional rights to the legend.
caption: Restored Piasa Bird carving along the Mississippi River near the junction with the Illinois River.
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