Return to the Tsalai page

Learn about this fascinating piece of Amerindian art. Sadly it appears that it has been destroyed and web sites such as this may be the only remaining records of this ancient aboriginal atifact, which is at least 300 to 400 years old. More detailed information will be coming to this page in the near future.

Aprenda sobre este pedazo fascinador de arte de los Indios de Norte Americano. Aparece tristemente que se ha destruido y solo los sitos como estos puede ser el único recordado restante de este atifacto aborigen antiguo, que es por lo menos 300 a 400 años de viejo. Información más detallada vendrá a esta página en el futuro.

Muchas Gracias!

 

Lernu pri cxi tiu fascinan pecon de Indiana arto. Malfelicxe, sxajnas ke estis detruita kaj retpagxoj kiaj cxi tiun eble estas la solaj rekordoj kiuj restas pri cxi tiu antikva indigxena artfarajxo, kiu almenaux havas 300 gxis 400 jarojn. Pli detalitaj informajxoj haveblos baldaux sur cxi tiun retpagxon future.

Dankegon!

 

 

 

 

The Piasa(w) "Monster-Bird"
of Alton, Illinois

See my growing collection of photographs and artistics renditions of the Piasaw Bird

Posted with permission of Dr. Carl Masthay, Ph.D., Linguistics:

This concerns the Piasaw petroglyph/pictograph once on the limestone cliff along the Mississippi River just above Alton, Illinois, and first seen by Père Jacques Marquette in 1673 and greatly faded by 1699. That cliff section has been quarried away. The picture in color now appears on a large cliff signboard at that location (if I judge by what I saw). [...] ... email: Carl Masthay, Ph.D.

Piasa, Piasaw (/PIE-uh-saw/): English rendering from historic French <Paillissa> (pronounced "pa-yee-sa"; noted in 1803 by Nicolas de Finiels
from his 1797 visit to Alton, Illinois [Ekberg 1989]), attested as <païssa> in the anonymous Illinois dictionary at St. Jérôme in Québec but unglossed there in a list of several terms for different types of supernatural beings and animals, and attested in "Chemin de S. Joseph aux illinois par Le tiatiki" (AsJCF, ms. Potier, Gazettes, Texte 1: p. 171, circa 1763). "Piasa" matches Miami-Illinois /pa'yiihsa/ 'elf, dwarf' (related terms: Ottawa /pahiins/, Potawatomi /pa?is/, Fox /apayaasa/~ /apayaasiiha/). These mythic creatures live near stream banks. Although over recent decades there was an awareness of parts of this etymology, it was David Costa primarily who clinched it, and the incorrect 'palisade' meaning by Carl Ekberg in his 1989 edition of Nicolas de Finiels's An Account of Upper Louisiana, p. 76, must be abandoned. One should keep in mind the underlying difference in the meaning of the word païssa from that of "Piasa bird petroglyph," which portrays the feared Kaskaskia Illinois aramipichia, arimipichia 'Underwater Panther' or its equivalent michipinchi8a [8 = w] 'great lynx/bobcat', the terrible mythological water monster, because the fearful awe by the Indians probably mixed the concepts of "elf" and the mysterious "bobcat." [Carl Masthay, 19 Dec. 2003]