Piasa
The Piasa ( ) or Piasa Bird is a creature from Native American mythology depicted in one of two murals painted by Native Americans on cliffsides above the Mississippi River. Its original location was at the end of a chain of limestone bluffs in Madison County, Illinois at present-day Alton, Illinois. The original Piasa illustration no longer exists; a newer 20th-century version, based partly on 19th-century sketches and lithographs, has been placed on a bluff in Alton, Illinois, several hundred yards upstream from its origin. The limestone rock quality is unsuited for holding an image, and the painting must be regularly restored. The original site of the painting was on lithographic limestone, which was quarried away in the late 1870s by the Mississippi Lime Company. History Murals The original mural was created prior to the arrival of any European explorers in the region. The location of the image was at a river-bluff terminus of the American Bottom floodplain. It may have b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Piasa P7090004
The Piasa ( ) or Piasa Bird is a creature from Native American mythology depicted in one of two murals painted by Native Americans on cliffsides above the Mississippi River. Its original location was at the end of a chain of limestone bluffs in Madison County, Illinois at present-day Alton, Illinois. The original Piasa illustration no longer exists; a newer 20th-century version, based partly on 19th-century sketches and lithographs, has been placed on a bluff in Alton, Illinois, several hundred yards upstream from its origin. The limestone rock quality is unsuited for holding an image, and the painting must be regularly restored. The original site of the painting was on lithographic limestone, which was quarried away in the late 1870s by the Mississippi Lime Company. History Murals The original mural was created prior to the arrival of any European explorers in the region. The location of the image was at a river-bluff terminus of the American Bottom floodplain. It may have b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alton, Illinois
Alton ( ) is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 25,676 at the 2020 census. It is a part of the River Bend area in the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. It is famous for its limestone bluffs along the river north of the city, as the former location of the state penitentiary, and for its role preceding and during the American Civil War. It was the site of the last Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate in October 1858. The former state penitentiary in Alton was used during the Civil War to hold up to 12,000 Confederate prisoners of war. History Although Alton once was growing faster than the nearby city of St. Louis, a coalition of St. Louis businessmen planned to build a competing town to stop Alton's expansion and bring business to St. Louis. The resulting town was Grafton, Illinois. Many blocks of housing in Alton were built in the Victorian ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thunderbird (mythology)
The thunderbird is a legendary creature in certain North American indigenous peoples' history and culture. It is considered a supernatural being of power and strength. It is especially important, and frequently depicted, in the art, songs and oral histories of many Pacific Northwest Coast cultures, but is also found in various forms among some peoples of the American Southwest, East Coast of the United States, Great Lakes, and Great Plains. In modern times it has achieved notoriety as a purported cryptid, similar to creatures such as Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. General description The thunderbird is said to create thunder by flapping its wings (Algonquian), and lightning by flashing its eyes (Algonquian, Iroquois). Algonquian The thunderbird myth and motif is prevalent among Algonquian peoples in the "Northeast", i.e., Eastern Canada (Ontario, Quebec, and eastward) and Northeastern United States, and the Iroquois peoples (surrounding the Great Lakes). The dis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Underwater Panther
An underwater panther, called ' (in Ojibwe syllabics: ) or ' (in syllabics: ) in Ojibwe (), is one of the most important of several mythical water beings among many Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands and Great Lakes region, particularly among the Anishinaabe. ' translates into "the Great Lynx". It has the head and paws of a giant cat but is covered in scales and has dagger-like spikes running along its back and tail. Mishipeshu calls Michipicoten Island in Lake Superior his home and is a powerful creature in the mythological traditions of some Indigenous North American tribes, particularly Anishinaabe, the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi, of the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. In addition to the Anishinaabeg, Innu also have ''Mishibizhiw'' stories. To the Algonquins, the underwater panther was the most powerful underworld being. The Ojibwe traditionally held them to be masters of all water creatures, including snakes. Some versions of the Nanabozho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cryptid
Cryptids are animals that cryptozoologists believe may exist somewhere in the wild, but are not believed to exist by mainstream science. Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience, which primarily looks at anecdotal stories, and other claims rejected by the scientific community. While biologists regularly identify new species following established scientific methodology, cryptozoologists focus on entities mentioned in the folklore record and rumor. Entities that may be considered cryptids by cryptozoologists include Bigfoot, Yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Mokele-mbembe. Scholars have noted that the cryptozoology subculture rejected mainstream approaches from an early date, and that adherents often express hostility to mainstream science. Scholars have studied cryptozoologists and their influence (including the pseudoscience's association with Young Earth creationism), noted parallels in cryptozoology and other pseudosciences such as ghost hunting ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Great Spirit
The Great Spirit is the concept of a life force, a Supreme Being or god known more specifically as Wakan Tanka in Lakota,Ostler, Jeffry. ''The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee''. Cambridge University Press, July 5, 2004. , pg 26. Gitche Manitou in Algonquian, and by other, specific names in a number of Native American and First Nations cultures.Thomas, Robert Murray. Manitou and God: North-American Indian Religions and Christian Culture. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. pg 35. While the concept is common to a number of indigenous cultures in the United States and Canada, it is not shared by all cultures, or necessarily interpreted in the same way. According to Lakota activist Russell Means, a more semantically accurate translation of Wakan Tanka is the Great Mystery.Means, Robert. ''Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means''. Macmillan, 1995. pg 241. Due to perceived similarities between the Great Spirit and the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Illinois Confederation
The Illinois Confederation, also referred to as the Illiniwek or Illini, were made up of 12 to 13 tribes who lived in the Mississippi River Valley. Eventually member tribes occupied an area reaching from Lake Michicigao (Michigan) to Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. The five main tribes were the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa. The name of the confederation was derived from the transliteration by French explorers of to ''Illinois'', more in keeping with the sounds of their own language. The tribes are estimated to have had tens of thousands of members, before the advancement of European contact in the 17th century that inhibited their growth and resulted in a marked decline in population. The Illinois, like many Native American groups, sustained themselves through agriculture, hunting, and fishing. A partially nomadic group, the Illinois often lived in longhouses and wigwams, according to the season and resources that were available to them in the s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shurtleff College
Shurtleff College was a Baptist liberal arts school in Alton, Illinois until 1957. History Founded in 1827 by Reverend John Mason Peck (a Baptist missionary) as Rock Spring Seminary in St. Clair County, Illinois, and relocated to Alton, Illinois in 1832, first as the Alton Seminary, then as Alton College, the institution was renamed again in 1836 as Shurtleff College, in honor of Dr. Benjamin Shurtleff of Boston who donated $10,000 to the college. In keeping with Baptist ideas about equality, the school came to accept women as well as men, and students of all races. This institution is both the first college in Illinois and the first between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi River In 1910 Andrew Carnegie, the prominent industrialist and philanthropist, donated $15,000 for construction of a library. The now national science and mathematics honor society, Sigma Zeta, was founded at Shurtleff College as a local organization to provide recognition for their science and mathemati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eldred, Illinois
Eldred is a village in Greene County, Illinois, United States. The population was 201 at the 2010 census. History Eldred was founded because of its situation in the Illinois River Bottoms as a town that combined the values of a river and a bluff-side village. Eldred first appeared on river plat books as "Farrow Town" in the 1830s, but was founded sometime before the admittance of Illinois as a state in 1818. A few of its original founders, were of Scotch-Irish ancestry from the Upland South. Geography Eldred is located in southwestern Greene County at (39.286663, -90.553458). Illinois Route 108 passes through the village, leading east to Carrollton, the Greene County seat, and west to the Illinois River and the Kampsville ferry. According to the 2010 census, Eldred has a total area of , all land. Situated in the lower Illinois River Valley, north of the Illinois River's confluence with the Mississippi River at Grafton, Eldred is nestled between the soaring limestone blu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Russell Of Bluffdale
John Russell of Bluffdale (1793–1863) was a 19th-century American novelist, writer and licensed Baptist preacher. He wrote the first published novel featuring Mormons. Russell was born in Vermont, but lived most of his life in Bluffdale, Illinois. In the early 1830s Russell was exposed to the teachings of Mormonism by Parley P. Pratt and William E. McLellin. Among Russell's works were ''The Venomous Worm'', a pro-temperance story published in McGuffey Readers. He also had published in 1853 ''The Mormoness'', the first published novel featuring a Mormon. It represented a more balanced portrayal of Mormons than most 19th-century mentions, lamenting attacks on their religious freedom while still largely disparaging their beliefs and practices. Sources *Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, ''Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 57-58. *John T. Flanagan John Theodore Flanagan (January 15, 1906 – March 11, 1996) was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Louis Jolliet
Louis Jolliet (September 21, 1645after May 1700) was a French-Canadian explorer known for his discoveries in North America. In 1673, Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit Catholic priest and missionary, were the first non-Natives to explore and map the Upper Mississippi River. Early life Jolliet was born in 1645 in Beaupré, a French settlement near Quebec City, to Jean Jolliet and Marie D'Abancourt. When he was six years old, his father died; his mother then married a successful merchant, Geoffroy Guillot dit Lavalle, until his death in 1665. Shortly after the passing of his mother's second husband, she was married to Martin Prevost until her death in 1678. Jolliet's stepfather owned land on the Ile d'Orleans, an island in the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec that was home to First Nations. Jolliet spent much time on Ile d'Orleans, so it was likely that he began speaking Indigenous languages of the Americas at a young age. Besides French, he also learned English and Spanish. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin
Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin (1650-c.1712) was a French trader who was appointed in the early 1670s as the first cartographer in '' Nouvelle France'' (Canada) by the colony's governor. He was appointed in 1688 as royal hydrographer by Louis XIV. Franquelin was born in the commune of Pallauau-sur-Indre in central France. He migrated to New France in 1671 where he was soon appointed as the colony's cartographer. He documented a decade of Louis Jolliet and René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's explorations in North America. He also completed other projects for the Crown and served the king's military engineer. After returning to France in 1692, he never lived in Canada again. Biography Born at Saint-Michel de Villebernin, he grew up in the village in the small commune of Palluau-sur-Indre in central France. Having developed drawing and mapmaking skills, Franquelin migrated in 1671 from Indre department to ''Nouvelle France'' (Quebec) to work as a trader. New France Governor L ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |