Source
lumenationOP•

The Piasa (/ˈpaɪ.əsɔː/ py-ə-saw) or Piasa Bird is a Native American dragon depicted in one of two murals painted by Native Americans on bluffs (cliffsides) 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.

I recommend the external links on the wiki page as well. Pretty cool stuff.

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redroguetech•

Citation needed.

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lumenationOP•

I have no idea how to combat that. That notice is from July 2009. The article has vastly improved and not been flagged since then, according to the talk page.

The main reason for the citation needed was that the main website: here, was removed for a while, then put back online in archive mode. I found out about it as it was a college project(2008). So this is not something I can't change immediately.

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redroguetech•

My... concern, is whether it's (what I would consider) a "dragon". I appreciate the additional source, but it suggests the myth may have originated with or tainted by a European.

I'll try to do some digging, to determine if archaeologists and paleo-sociologists consider it to be a "dragon". To my untrained eye, it appears to be a mix of many different creatures, like a hippogriff (etc.).

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lumenationOP•

Check the talk page there is someone mentioning that exact same thing

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Reedstilt•

"Dragon" is a poor choice for describing the piasa. There are piasa-like creatures depicted in Pre-Columbian artwork, showing mixing the features of a large cat (probably a mountain lion, but maybe jaguars in a few cases) with those of humans and birds of prey. In that sense, they're more like sphinxes or griffons. Here's an example from drawn off an image on a Mississippian shell cup. That said, even the name "piasa" is a modern word with a confused etymology for these creatures that probably wasn't applied in the past.

Ironically, the creature painted on the cliff that is mentioned in the OP isn't a piasa, or not what we call piasa now. As originally described by Marquette, it matches the description of an Underwater Panther, which is a different beast. The wings appear to have been a later addition

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