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ALTON - On October 5, 1924, at 2:00 p.m., the Piasa Bird painting by Boy Scout and Alton High School Student Herbert Forcade on the bluffs at the end of Prospect Street was dedicated.
W.D. Armstrong, president of the Madison County Historical Society, announced the program in the Alton Evening Telegraph several days before the event. The official schedule included the songs “America” and “Illinois,” played by the Franklin Quartette, a reading of “The Legend of the Piasa Bird,” by John D. McAdams, and speeches by Illinois Senator H.G. Giberson, President of the Local Council of Boy Scouts Eben Rodgers, Gilson Brown on behalf of the City of Alton, and others.
The attendance “surpassed expectation, and was a most gratifying manifestation of appreciation of Alton people for the efforts…put forth to restore the picture on the bluff which workmen quarried away near three quarters of a century ago.”
The original Piasa Bird painting stood guard on the cliff face above the Alton Petitionary, but the rock was quarried in the 1800s. In 1924, Forcade was chosen to paint his version of the Piasa Bird on Lovers Leap, which was as near to the original painting’s location as possible. The painting remained there until 1952, when the cliff was blasted away to widen the River Road. It was repainted right away further down the cliffs, then demolished again a decade later. The next version, painted in 1963, was based on artwork by Ruth Means. From 1983 to 1995, a metal version (also based on Means’ artwork) at Norman’s Landing greeted travelers along the River Road, before it was moved to its current home at Southwestern High School. The present Piasa Bird painting is perched on the bluffs at Piasa Park, which was built in 1998. Dave Stevens was the artist, but community members could make monetary donations to the project and then help paint the Piasa.
Forcade’s painting, and subsequent paintings, are based on a myth created in 1836 by a professor at Shurtleff College named John Russell. Russell wrote a story to explain the painting on the cliffs. He called his story “The Piasa: An Indian Tradition of Illinois” and it was first published in the August 1836 issue of The Family Magazine. Many Illinois newspapers, including the Alton Telegraph, printed the story in their pages. Alton was incorporated as a city the next year, in 1837. Russell’s legend of the Piasa Bird and Chief Ouatoga has been a part of Alton’s history since before the city officially existed. Russell completely changed the narrative several times over the years, and admitted to Alton author William McAdams that his story was “somewhat illustrated.” But by then the legend was already part of Alton’s cultural heritage. And even though the Chief Ouatoga story itself is a fabrication, the fact that local Indigenous American artists painted incredible artwork on the cliffs is true. The ancient mural we call the Piasa Bird was created prior to 1673, and is most likely a version of what archaeologists have described as the “underwater panther” that appears in artwork across this swath of North America.
The first record we have of what we now refer to as the Piasa Bird did not even mention wings. Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet traveled down the Mississippi River in 1673 from Canada through this area on their way to find the mouth of the Mississippi. The land belonged to France, and they hoped the river would empty into the Pacific Ocean. They could not cross Spanish Lands south of us, and so ended their journey in Arkansas without reaching the Gulf of Mexico. But on the way, Marquette and Joliet did discover not one, but two paintings on the side of the cliffs near Alton that left them thunderstruck.
"While skirting some rocks, which by their height and length inspired awe, we saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. They are 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, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the three colors composing the picture."
French cartographer Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin compiled a map titled "The Mississippi" in about the year 1682, from Marquette and Joliet's description. A creature similar to the underwater panther (and our Piasa Bird without the wings) is sketched on the map east of the Missouri River and south of the Illinois River.
Regardless of the origins, residents of the Riverbend have embraced the Piasa bird as a symbol of our area. An Alton Telegraph article from 1875 states, “It is a great pity that the utilitarian pioneers of Alton blasted away this cliff for building stone, and thus effaced the most wonderful relic of a past age that could have been found on the continent.” It is a great pity indeed, but although the original painting is gone, the legacy of the Piasa Bird lives on.
Sources
“Dreaded Piasa Bird of Other Years Returns.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), October 6, 1924.
“Duane Esarey's ECIAS Piasa Talk.” Untangling the Piasa's Tale. The talk was given on January 15, 2015 at the Urbana Free Library in Urbana, Illinois.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP2nR_PqIMk
Dunphy, John J. “Piasa Bird: More Fiction Than Fact.” Dec 28, 2018https://johnjdunphy.medium.com/the-piasa-bird-more-fiction-than-fact-208dff9f669
McDonald, Lacy. “The Piasa Bird.” The Hayner Public Library District Newsletter, Spring 2021.https://archive.org/details/the-hayner-public-library-district-newsletters-2021
“The Mississippi” by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin and Louis Joliet, Library of Congresshttps://www.loc.gov/resource/g4042m.ct000784/?r=0.421,0.3,0.328,0.204,0
“Piasa Bird.” Mythic Mississippi Project. University of Illinois Board of Trustees, 2024.https://mythicmississippi.illinois.edu/native-illinois/piasa-bird/
“The Piasa Bird.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), October 7, 1924.
“Piasa Bird Dedication at 2 p.m. tomorrow.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), October 4, 1924.
“Painting of Piasa Bird on Bluffs is Started Today.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), August 28, 1924.
“Piasa Bird Dedication is All Ready.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), October 2, 1924.
“Piasa Bird Will Again Take Place on Alton Bluff.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), June 30, 1924.
“Selecting Paint for Picturing Piasa Bird.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), July 23, 1924.
“To Be Dedicated Tomorrow.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), October 4, 1924.
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