In the legends of the Miami tribe, the Miamis were fighting their traditional enemies, the Mestchegamies, at the upper end of the lower canyon near the cave of the Piasa. As the fighting was reaching its climax, the war whoops apparently disturbed the Piasa, and two fierce, winged creatures emerged from their caves, “uttering bellowings and shrieks, while the flapping of their wings upon the air roared out like so many thunderclaps.”
The awful winged beasts swooped low over the heads of the combatants, and each snatched a Miami chieftain in its massive talons. The Miamis became instantly demoralized, believing that the Great Spirit had sent the Piasa to aid and assist their enemies. The Miamis were so crippled as a nation that the survivors fled toward the Wabash River and did not feel safe until they had crossed its waters. Here they remained for generations before returning to Illinois territory.
If these stories are true, then the seeming assistance by the Piasa to the Mestchegamies in their desperate battle with the Miamis near Alton, Illinois, proved to be a terrible curse instead of a sudden blessing. Soon after the Piasa had flown off with the screaming and struggling Miami chieftains in their talons, the monsters apparently developed a taste for human flesh. Consequently, the Mestchegami came to pay for their victory over the Miamis through an unending sacrifice of their people to feed the ever hungry Piasa, which now seemed insatiable in their forays for human flesh.
Sometime in the 1840s, Professor John Russell of Jersey County, Illinois, explored the caves which the Piasa were said to have inhabited and reported that the roof of the cavern was nearly 20 feet high and vaulted. The shape of the cave was irregular, but so far as Professor Russell and his guide could judge the bottom averaged 20x30 feet.
According to Russell: “The floor of the cave throughout its whole extent was one mass of human bones. Skulls 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 found only bones. The remains of thousands must have been deposited there.”
Professor John Russell published an account of the Piasa's insatiable appetite for human flesh in the 1848 July number of The Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate:
“[the Piasa] was artful as he was powerful, and would dart suddenly and unexpectedly upon an Indian, bear him off into one of the caves of the bluff and devour him. Hundreds of warriors attempted for years to destroy him, but without success. Whole villages were nearly depopulated, and consternation spread through all the tribes of the Illini.”
According to P.A. Armstrong's little book and his recounting of the Miami tradition, the Piasa existed “several thousand winters before the palefaces came.” Armstrong goes on to suggest the Piasa could have been surviving pterodactyls from the age of the great reptiles.
“The fossil remains of some 25 species of this monster have been found [circa 1887], and it is sometimes called the pterosaur or flying lizard,” he writes. “But the most singular monster of the age yet discovered [and its shape and component parts analyzed] is the ramphorhyneus, which seems to be a connective link between birds, beasts, and reptiles. Its body and neck resemble that of the Piasa, while its tail is identical with it, except it is pictured as dragging behind instead of being carried around the body or over its back and head. The shape of the head is drawn to resemble that of a duck, with the long bill of a snipe or bittern, but it is full of sharp, round teeth, like those of the crocodile. It had four legs, with eagle’s talons, and a pair of bat-like wings...its entire length from head to tip of tail was probably thirty feet or more. In many respects the Piasa is a faithful copy of the ramphorhyneus. The form, shape, and description of the Piasa, according to the Indian tradition, were painted from actual sight of the living subject....Thus may the traditions of these Indians be true....”
And if those traditions are true, then there may still be some Piasas--true living Thunderbirds--flying around in the skies above us today.
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