The North American Dragon The piasa Bird.
This is a little non 2012 related history, I once took a couple of weeks to study the Piasa bird a local dragon legend. I thought I'd show some of the links if i can find them some of the different places and theories associated with the story. I will link what I can find but think I have a fairly decent idea of the basic legend along with the tales.
First some facts .
The creature was given its name by the Illini Indians, "The Piasa", meaning a bird that devours men.
Piasa Bird (pronounced Pie-a-saw), is a local legend in the Alton area. Its foundings go back to 1673 when Father Jacques Marquette, in recording his famous journey down the Mississippi River with Louis Joliet, described the "Piasa" as a birdlike monster painted high on the bluffs along the Mississippi River, where the city of Alton, Illinois now stands.
According to the diary, the Piasa "was as large as a calf with horns like a deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger's, a face like a man, the body covered with green, red and black scales and a tail so long it passed around the body, over the head and between the legs." 
This Piasa is the one I grew up with . In my research I found that the original Piasa a petroglyph was starting to fade by the early 19th century. In the mid 1800s the bluff it was on was blew up to make a railroad line'
The creature was given its name by the Illini Indians, "The Piasa", meaning a bird that devours men.
http://www.greatriverroad.com/cities/alton/piasabird.htm This is from the Alton Historical records , what I call the grade school Americanised version. From here the story changes As Joliet according to records said there were two birds originally . Later we'll get into how this is important. Since Most of the European occupation it's been always considered One bird painted high on a bluff.
The story of the painting itself surviving and morphing into this guy Its moved up and down The River with the exact location of the original being unknown. Its My guess That it is between What is now Pier Marquette state park In Illinois And Alton Illinois . However with almost every part of this story their are other theories , one being Slighty unlikely that the Piasa Was actually on the Missouri River ,This is due to the controversy over the paths of the Missouri and Mississippii. when mapping the river the two explorers came up the river to where the two rivers meet ' They had to at this point choose which of the ways was the Mississippi went, The Missouri river is almost as big as the Mississippi where they meet. The usual way is to pick the biggest channel as the original river. If They would have went left at the now Missouri river it would of been considered the Mississippi the longest river in the world. Plus its flood plains that change constantly its possible the Piasa was on the Missouri. This was recently a bit of history debate , these two guys actually we think made the right choice. Anyway the story is that in the late 19th century local boyscouts heard of the now vanished piasa and talked the city of Alton into painting another one. they did and it lasted into the early twenties before it was again blowed up by the railroad. As a deal the railroad designated a new spot , . later the painting was replaced by the large metal sign ,. In the late 90's for some weird reason the owners of the spot decided no more Bird . A few years later the city of Alton built a park out of an old mine operation . Hopefully he can park here for awhile. Trouble is nobody likes this version . Which was painted by an art historian who said this is what it was supposed to look like. The problem was the facial area , his having a more round lion face over the skinny European looking face we were used to. 
I like to state the discrepancies of the bird because they are another fascinating detail.
First the legend . I'm going to paste A few links to the different legends .
http://www2.ic.edu/cochran/ClassPages/205Spring03/Downs/TheLegendof... this is a great Piasa sight with a whole smorgasbord of Piasa Legends.
http://www.illinoishistory.com/piasabird.html this guy is one of the many refuters. Its great along with most of the stories we have from officialdom the tale has suffered from being rewritten by conquerors.
http://www.failedsuccess.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/piasa_bird_... this is another good read on the legend with some pretty good side information .http://www.altonhauntings.com/piasa.html from Alton the most haunted town in America
The original Piasa Bird was a petroglyph (a prehistoric carving, usually pictorial, gouged into a rock surface). According to legend, in the years long before the Europeans arrived in the Meeting of the Great Rivers area, the Piasa (pronounced Pie-a-saw) was a bird-like creature of such great size that it could easily carry off a full grown deer in its talons. But what concerned the Illini tribes of the region was that the creature preferred human flesh. The native people attempted for years to destroy the creature but were unsuccessful and watched with terror as this monster destroyed whole villages.
Then a local chief, Ouatoga, whose fame as a great warrior extended far beyond the region, separated himself from the rest of his tribe, fasted in solitude for the space of a full moon, and prayed to the Great Spirit to protect his people from the Piasa. On the last night of his fast, the Great Spirit appeared to the chief in a dream and directed him to select and arm twenty warriors with bows and poison arrows. He was instructed to hide the warriors in a chosen spot while one warrior was to stand in open view as bait for the Piasa. As instructed in the dream, Ouatoga assembled his warriors and laid the trap with himself as the bait. Soon Ouatoga saw the Piasa perched on a nearby bluff. Ouatoga stood erect and chanted the death song of a warrior to attract the great beast. As the Piasa swooped down upon the chief, the hidden warriors let loose their poison arrows. Mortally wounded, the Piasa uttered an awful and hideous scream that could be heard far and wide. In commemoration of the event, the image of the Piasa was engraved on the bluff. It then became the custom that whenever a warrior passed the image, he discharged an arrow at the once feared creature.
Generally this is the story yet without the many moons crap. That's a paste Ouatoga sometime Chatawga was considered a great chief I researched him and found that he was an historical person. He was involved in a few instances of Illiniwek history including uniting the Illiniwek. Basically if tribes had a problem or if the problem was big enough you consulted the higher ranked chief. So more than likely Outoga was a real person.
This becomes more interesting as there are some counter stories including the one I linked above , that a dime novel writer made up the whole story. Some of my favorite counter legends is that historians think the Piasa bird was there when the Illiniwek settled the area. They saw the painting and made up the legend of their great chief like for scaring the kids and tourist.
A part of this theory evolves what we could call the Thunderbird glyphs in North America. Sad to say I seen this on tv it was the theory that the indigenous tribes of America had found fossils in an area and used their imagination to create pictures of these flying beast. This is plausible in that we now think dinosaurs are more related to birds than reptiles. Its held that all Thunderbird myths are stories made up about dinosaur bones.
Not many if any of these glyphs in varying forms survive . The main point is they are legend , unless you read on.
Joliet and Marquette scoffed at this tale, attributing it to silly Indian folklore. However, they were both explorers who had spent a great deal of time discovering and documenting new species they encountered in their journeys west. Despite the chief’s warnings, they decided to explore the cave and see if they could find some evidence of this strange species.
They amassed a party of white settlers and an Illini scout named Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh (Sees in the Darkness) who was well known to the villagers as being able to see in the night as if it were daylight. They entered the cave and, armed with torches and muskets, began to work their way into the bluffs. As they explored deeper into the cave, they began to feel the crunch of bones underneath their feet. Further examination revealed them to be the bones of many different animals, some they even believed to be human remains.
Suddenly, a mist and wind swept through the cave, extinguishing their torches. In the darkness they began to hear loud shrieks and screams. Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh told Joliet that he saw many reptilian creatures, about the size of eagles, swarming towards them. Behind these creatures, he saw an enormous reptilian monster and declared it to be the “Piasa Bird”. The party fired a volley into the darkness from their muskets, and then fled towards the mouth of the cave. There was panic and confusion as the men struggled to reach the cave opening; meanwhile screams of men filled the air and were abruptly silenced. Joliet, Marquette, Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh, and one other settler were the only ones to make it out of the cave.
They returned to the village and Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh told the chief what had happened. The chief, angered that they had awakened the evil spirits, forced them to leave the village. Joliet and Marquette returned to the nearby French outpost of St. Louis and amassed an army of traders, soldiers, and able bodies to help them eliminate what they saw as a threat to trade and settlement opportunities in the region. When they returned to the village, they found it destroyed and deserted. They heard cries and screams in the distance.
A few minutes later, they noticed a dark mass approaching in the northern sky. Hundreds of winged creatures, followed by the enormous Piasa Bird, were descending upon them. The soldiers began firing their muskets, cannons, and ship-mounted artillery into the mass. The creatures began to fall from the sky as they were struck by the ordinance, but still on the mass of creatures came. The solders, with Joliet and Marquette at the lead, fought a pitched battle with the creatures as men and equipment were picked up and thrown about. Bodies were torn apart as the Piasa Bird and its minions swarmed the soldiers.
Slowly the soldiers began to drive the creatures back towards the bluff using torches and bonfires. The creatures appeared to fear the heat of the flames. Several other boats had arrived with more soldiers and weapons to reinforce the makeshift army and join the battle. Under Joliet’s direction, the soldiers fought to force the monsters towards the bluffs and back into the cave where they had discovered them. Joliet figured that he could trap the creatures inside the cave and then seal it shut. Once the creatures were driven back into the cave, fires were set all around the mouth of the cave to keep them at bay. Cannoneers came forward and blasted the cliff face with a volley of cannonballs, creating an avalanche of rock and debris, effectively sealing the cave.
Upon their return to St. Louis, Joliet and Marquette reported to the governor what had transpired. They agreed that the menace had surely been destroyed and, in the interest of protecting their profits and interests in this new land, decided to keep the story of the Piasa Bird and its kin quiet.
That is the first of many occurrences of myth encounters in the area on both sides of the river. The natives of the time considered the Piasa bird as a warning like a falling rock sign. I mean I think the above story is a little strong for dinosaur bones, the side story is that their were usually two birds, they were a pair mates more or less, it makes sense more like a large flying predator that had survived from a much earlier world.
The area with three major rivers could easily support a large bird big enough to eat deer , Also thrwo in that Catfish were the dominant species of the rivers , they can get as large as their environment, they could of ate fish in the two to three hundred pound range. Consider also its an area the hasn't changed much overall in millions of years.
the Mississippi is considered the oldest river in the world. So a giant species of bird could of existed here for an indeterminate age.. In both Failed success and Alton hauntings.com they talk of early settlers encountering bone caves along the river. Something captured large animals and ate them in the caves.
This is a good link http://books.google.com/books?id=gE4P1bhDCB4C&pg=PA89&lpg=P... its a book I think but has some stories on bone caves. This post is getting huge think it need cut in half , I told you I could almost collect a book on the Piasa .
If you want to get ahead of me search for " The Lawnvale Incedent" it was covered on Monster hunters of cable . ' If you think I'm saying that there were and maybe are giant birds that devour men in the skies of the midwest USA . well?
