Baby Piasa Caught in Ocmulgee River

Newshound and all around scholar at large, Robert V. Sharp (also director of publications at the Chicago Art Institute) tracked down this story and it is worth re-reporting and amplifying. The headline is “Baby Piasa Caught in Ocmulgee River.” Here is the photo to go with it:

Some background is in order on this one. The Pisa (Pie-a-saw) is a Beneath World creature of Native American beliefs. Also known as the Underwater Panther and Mishebeshu, this creature—or more accurately, being—inhabits the realms of the cosmos located beneath water and beneath the ground. To most Native Americans, the cosmos is divided into three realms.

Drawing by Jack Johnson, courtesy of Kent Reilly 

This World is the world that people inhabit. It is conceived of as a great island floating on the primordial sea. Above it is the Above World. This is thought of as a rock dome where the Sun, various bird-like beings and other forces live. This World is attached to the Above World by ropes or some other method at the cardinal directions. The third Realm is the Beneath World. It lies beneath this World and also under water. At night, the Beneath World rotates to become the night sky and then as the sun rises it rotates back down. While the Above World is generally a place of order and moral purity, the Beneath World is a place of chaos and death. The Piasa is an inhabitant of the Beneath World and sometimes called the Lord of Death. The presence of the Piasa is evidenced by various eddies and whirlpools that are created by his tail and serve to pull living things down to the realm of the dead.

It is easy to think of the Piasa as the bad guy of the cosmos. To Native Americans, it is really not quite that simple. The Beneath World is gendered female and is associated with both death and creation. Water gives life and is fundamental to the existence of life on This World. Death is part of a natural cycle of opposites that includes night and day, male and female, creation and death, water and sky, etc.. For the world to work properly these oppositions need to exist and they each need to do their own thing. The key for Native Americans is balance of these opposing realms, beings, and powers. If you take the Piasa out of the equation, then that balance disappears and chaos overtakes everything.

The Beneath World is the place where the dead go after they die. It is where the ancestors live and it is where life comes from. When the Beneath World rotates to the night sky, the Path of Souls becomes visible—it is the Milky Way. The dead take that path as they travel to their ultimate home. In some versions of Native American belief, the Lord of Death is part of that path and plays a key role in getting the souls of the dead to where they need to be.

A great place to read more about the Piasa is in a paper by George Lankford called "The Great Serpent in Eastern North America" and it can be found in a book edited by Kent Reilly and James Garber with the title Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms.

There are many descriptions of the Piasa and even more images of it in European written history, Native American oral history, and Native American art. Probably the most famous image and description comes from Father Jacques Marquette. While traveling among Native Americans of the Mississippi River in 1673, Marquette encountered and described two images of the Piasa painted on a limestone bluff overlooking the Mississippi River near present-day Alton, Illinois in 1673. This is his description:

"While Skirting some rocks, which by Their height and length inspired awe, We saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made Us afraid, and upon Which the boldest savages dare not Long rest their eyes. They are as large As a calf; they have Horns on their heads Like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard Like a tiger's, a face somewhat like a man's, a body Covered with scales, and so Long A tail that it winds all around the Body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a Fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the three Colors composing the Picture. Moreover, these 2 monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author; for good painters in France would find it difficult to reach that place Conveniently to paint them."

Here is a reproduction of the image Marquette described plus one done by his cartographer:

Here are some examples from Mississippian period (Native Americans from around AD 900 to 1600) art:

Engraved shell cup found at the Spiro site in Oklahoma

Carved stone pipe

Engraved shell gorget from the Moundville site in Alabama

Embossed copper plate from the Hollywood site, Georgia.

Carved stone bowl from the Belle Mead site in Arkansas

The key qualities seem to be the cat aspects, wings, and the long, forked tail.

Now this may sound like a quaint Native American myth, but it is not. I personally know people who have seen a Piasa. It gets a lot harder to dismiss something when you know somebody who believes.

Back to Robert’s photo, is it a baby Piasa? Is that what Native Americans thought and continue to think is the Lord of Death? Probably not. Native Americans, both in the past and today, know what at catfish is and know it is part of the natural world. The Piasa is a supernatural being. It is other worldly and therefore doesn’t have a counterpart in the animal world. Is that giant catfish one of the minions of the Lord of Death? I don’t know, but it’s worth asking.