The Piasa is a legendary Native American creature depicted in murals on the Mississippi River bluffs near Alton, Illinois. Father Jacques Marquette documented it in 1673, describing horns like a deer's, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a body covered in scales, and a tail that winds all around the body.
Marquette's 1673 account made no mention of wings. The "bird" association came later: around 1836 John Russell called it the "Piasa Bird" and spread a legend that the name meant "the bird that devours men" in the Illini language. Modern scholarship links the imagery to the Underwater Panther figure rather than to an actual bird.