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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kilmore" data-source="post: 1095970" data-attributes="member: 5226">I'll try to post a number of St. Louis area legends.  We got quite a few.     On the banks of the Mississippi River just north of Alton Illinois, about 30 miles upriver from St. Louis, there is a painting of a ferocious monster on the bluffs right over the river.  The Indians originally painted it there many centuries ago, though the original was blown off by quarrymen in the early 19th century.  The painting has been recreated.     Anyways, the legend says that the monster was a huge horrible monster that was large enough to carry off a full grown deer, though it preferred fresh human meat.  It had glowing red eyes, the beard of a tiger, the horns of a deer, a man's face, and green, red and black scales all over it's body.  It's tail was so long that it could pass over the monster's head and back around under it's legs.  It's mouth held rows of sharp teets and it had the talons of a great eagle.  It liked to swoop down from it's home in the caves of the bluffs and snatch Indians paddling down the river in their canoes.     It was called the Piasa, "devourer of men".     Hundreds of brave Indian warriors tried to slay the monster.  They all died to the last man.  Entire villages were destroyed.  The great Illini chief Ouatoga desperately sought a means to destroy the monster.  He spent a month in solitude fasting and praying to the Great Spirit.  Eventually a vision came to him and he knew what he had to do.     Ouatoga stood boldly upon the bluffs over the river, offering himself as a sacrifice.  He eyed the monster circling in the sky, and the Piasa spied him standing there defiantly chanting his death song.  With a ferocious roar, the Piasa plummeted out of the sky towards Ouatoga.  Then, as the Great Spirit directed, twenty of the strongest and bravest warriors of the Illini tribe sprung out of the bushes around the chief and sank poisoned arrows into the great beast.     Howling in rage and pain, the monster plummeted into the Missisippi River and died.     I have read accounts that white people in the 19th century had discovered a cave on the bluffs of the river near the painting full of ancient human bones.</blockquote>

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