{"id":2787,"date":"2015-04-16T15:12:35","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T15:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archives.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/?page_id=2787"},"modified":"2026-02-19T18:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:25:07","slug":"piasa","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/news-events\/exhibits\/woodblocks\/piasa\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas 1953: The Piasa Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

North of Alton, IL<\/strong><\/p>\n


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\"The<\/a>
The card’s interior.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The Piasa Bird woodblock print card.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Piasa Bird is a Native American dragon depicted in a mural painted by Native Americans on bluffs above the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois. The Piasa Bird was said to have the head of a fox with the beak of an eagle, surmounted by horns. It was covered in scales of every imaginable color and the flapping of its wings produced a sound like thunder.<\/p>\n

The original Piasa illustration on the bluffs no longer existed by the time the Turners created the Piasa Bird print. They had wanted to do a woodblock print of the Piasa Bird for some time, \u201cbut our problem was increasingly complicated by the question, \u2018which Piasa Bird?\u2019 We have copies of six different versions of this legendary bird, and there seems to be some evidence favoring the validity of each one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, the Turners reproduced an 1841 lithograph of the Piasa Bird by John Casper Wild. The Turners\u2019 full research on the Piasa Bird is accessible in their Christmas 1953 note<\/a>, which was enclosed inside the card.<\/p>\n

Return to Christmas 1952<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Continue to Christmas 1956<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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North of Alton, IL Previous Page Exhibit Home\u00a0|\u00a0Acknowledgements Next Page The Piasa Bird is a Native American dragon depicted in a mural painted by Native Americans on bluffs above the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois. The Piasa Bird was said to have the head of a fox with the beak of an eagle, surmounted by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"parent":2748,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2787","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2787"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12304,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2787\/revisions\/12304"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/slc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}