Illustration by Britt Spencer
If you and a significant other are planning to bundle up and make a Valentine’s visit to Pere Marquette State Park, you might find yourselves at Lover’s Leap, a bluff overlooking the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, wondering how the scenic site got its name.
No one knows for sure, according to park officials. But a photocopy of an old, undated newspaper article in the park office archives contains the most detailed account.
The story begins near present-day St. Charles with an 18-year-old Big Osage man named Black Otter, whose moniker came from his ability to swim the local rivers as a boy. One day Black Otter was on the bank of the Mississippi when he spied a young woman dangling her feet from a bluff on the opposite side. That evening, he swam across the Big Muddy and scaled the bluff. The maiden, who was impressed by Black Otter’s feats, was Laughing Water, an Illini chief’s daughter. This was the first of many midnight rendezvous atop that bluff, for they both knew that if Laughing Water’s father found that she was in love with a man from a rival tribe, it would almost certainly end in Black Otter’s death, if not a full-scale war between the nations.
Eventually, the tale goes, the chief learned about the lovebirds. He dipped an arrowhead in snake venom and set up an ambush. But the father’s aim faltered, and the arrow hit Laughing Water instead. She fell into the arms of Black Otter, who could hear the war cry of the Illini as they approached. Holding his lover, he leaped from the cliff and into the river.
“There’s no way to verify it, at least not 100 percent,” says Scott Isringhausen, who works at the park. “It’s a story that’s been told for a long time.”
And it’s a story that’s been told in many different places.
There are Lover’s Leaps elsewhere, from California to Maine and beyond, though the details of each site’s legend vary slightly—often, all a storyteller must do is change the names of the rival native tribes. As Mark Twain once noted, “There are fifty Lover’s Leaps along the Mississippi from whose summit disappointed Indian girls have jumped.” In fact, Twain’s hometown of Hannibal has its own Lover’s Leap, which looks out over the Mississippi and involves a similar tale of young romantics from two tribes at odds.
So should visitors believe the legend at Pere Marquette?
It might take a leap of faith.
