Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

  Now it was time for the second stage—moving and burying the Giant—for which Hull had “lain the groundwork” with his second cousin, once removed, a vegetable farmer named Stubby Newell who owned fifty acres of dark-dirt land in the Onondaga Valley outside Cardiff, twelve miles south of Syracuse.

  I asked Stubby to clear a plot behind his barn, hidden from the post road. Here, he could dig a shallow grave and leave the Giant to rest. A year, I thought, would be sufficient to age my Giant a few biblical eons; then we’d dig him up, and the sideshow would begin.

  Now, I knew a crate that size, coming in by teamster, would draw local gossip, so I told Stubby to tell his neighbors, if they asked, that he got a new rotary cultivator from Deere & Company of Moline, Illinois.

  “What do I say when I don’t have a new cultivator, then?” Stubby asked.

  “Tell them it was broke.”

  Stubby worked three days on the hole. When the Giant was delivered, Stub busted up the box and rented a team of oxen to drag it into the grave.

  We harnessed and strapped them to the Giant, and the animals started to pull, Hull wrote. I raised welts on their haunches with the whip as they snorted and strained. “Gidyap, goddamnit,” I yelled, and I went harder with the whip to near exhaustion, tearing into the hides of those beasts until Stub grabbed me in a bear hug, and said, “Jeezum, George, them’s borrowed animals!”

  The Giant would be “discovered” a year later, in mid-October, the most temperate time in the Onondaga Valley; clear skies, dry days, with the last warm breezes coming from the south before Arctic winds came down. It was after harvest season, when farmers had fresh money in their pockets and time for a little leisure. Those warm Indian summer days would entice the Syracuse crowds for one last country jaunt, before frost came.

  I checked the Farmers’ Almanac and saw a glorious, dry two weeks predicted beyond October 16, Hull wrote. That was it then. Saturday, October 16, 1869, would be the resurrection of my Goliath. The Holy Rollers and Shakers and fanatics would trample the farm to see fossilized proof of their Good Book’s veracity. Their unwavering faith in the Word would override the unblinking truth of the Eye, and convince them they were looking at something more miraculous than a plain rock, these worshippers of stonemen!

  He planned to collect two bits from several hundred people, then bury the Giant for all time. But Hull underestimated the public gullibility. He underestimated the egos of preachers who rushed to Cardiff to rejoice and proclaim the proof of biblical accuracy, and the egos of the scientists who rushed to Cardiff to become the first to proclaim the Giant authentic or fake.

  Most of all, Hull underestimated the power of the new wired world, which got news of the Giant to every Western Union depot in the nation, from major cities like New York and Chicago to outposts like Butte, Montana, and Yuma, Arizona. He underestimated the rolling momentum of such word, which once in this expansive public domain created something never before seen in America. A fad, a craze, a trend. Hype and hysteria. The Western Union wires did that, beckoning all who could to travel to Cardiff, and those who could not to follow the news. And they did.

  * * *

  WHEN STUB AND TWO FIELD hands unearthed the Giant on the prescribed day, Hull was on his way from Binghamton in a freight wagon, packed with a yellow-striped tent, a couple rolls of chicken-wire fencing, and printed flyers announcing the find, which he dropped off in every village along the way. He also had a portable strongbox for the proceeds, and a Colt six-gun to protect them.

  In each village—places like Chenango Bridge, Marathon, Tully, Cortland, and Preble—he told them about the miracle up in Cardiff. The posters hit the porch of every general store, stage depot, and postal office. Before he ever got to Cardiff, hundreds of people in New York State’s apple region heard the news or read the posters.

  COME SEE!

  THE CARDIFF GIANT!

  Larger than Goliath whom David slew!

  10 feet tall! 1,000 pounds!

  An Amazing Discovery!

  The American Goliath!

  Ask for Newell’s Farm on the Main Road in CARDIFF, N.Y.

  As delivery wagons, mail coaches, and passenger buggies came and went that afternoon, word spread to Cazenovia and Pompey and Joshua and Lords Corner and all the other little villages on the east-west route.

  When Hull got to the farm, Stub was sloshing the Giant with Borax and scrubbing him with a wire brush, just like Hull told him.

  “Looks as good as the day he was born,” Hull said. “Let’s get to work.”

  They were still fiddling with the striped awning, driving in the final spikes, when the first out-of-towners arrived. The Cardiff folks all got there sooner, looking with wide-mouth agapement, Hull wrote.

  We let the Cardiff folks view for free—they were neighbors, after all—but their astonishment and the high-volume speculation paid for itself in my joy. Children screamed in delight and pointed to the Giant’s enormous genitals.

  “Maybe we should cover that thing up,” Stub suggested.

  “No,” I said, “such a detail exposes his authenticity.”

  All around Hull, he heard the arguments and theories begin.

  “Everything . . . elephants, tigers, people . . . was bigger in them days.”

  “I seen a fella ’bout this size come up from Elmira back with the Twelfth Reg . . . think he got it at Chancellorsville, or maybe it was Antietam. Hit with Reb mortar, right in the chest, I heard. Didn’t even knock him down. Was the bleeding that killed him.”

  “Lookit, there’s the dent in his head where David hit him with the stone.”

  By night, the orange specks of a thousand lanterns swarmed like fireflies on an alfalfa field in July. The smell of kerosene polluted the crisp New York autumn air.

  That night, John Clarke, a Shaker in the Temperance Movement, was on his way to Syracuse for a lecture when he heard about the commotion over in Cardiff. He ordered his driver to find the farm, where Clarke beheld the Giant in flickering lantern light and was convinced of his authenticity.

  “His size is an allegory for the voracious and lurid human appetite of the vices,” Clarke would tell an audience of teetotalers at the Wieting Opera House. “And his extinction makes a lucid case for moderation and temperance.”

  The moment was not lost on Hull.

  A man of Clarke’s stature gave the Giant credibility. Within a day reporters from the Daily Standard, Daily Journal, and Courier came down from Syracuse. I herded the photographers in, and lightning went off all ’round the giant, and the smoke of burnt fireworks filled the tent. The next day he was laid out on the front pages of the three newspapers for all to see. The Standard called my Giant “the most wondrous scientific discovery of the century.”

  In came the crowds, by foot, horseback, and wagon. The children of Cardiff sold them lemonade and cool water, their mothers rented rooms, and their fathers stabled tired horses. The crowds reminded people of Abe Lincoln’s funeral train four years earlier.

  By Tuesday afternoon, the New York Herald, Tribune, and Times sent reporters. “For believers, it is evidence of truth in the Book,” Hull told them. “It’s as if they have seen Jesus walk on water with their own eyes, or watched Him push aside the stone of His tomb.”

  A Times editorial reported, “Whatever it is, the discovery in Onondaga has begun yet another round of spirited discourse in the age-old debate between religion and science.”

  True enough, distinguished men from both sides rushed in with opinions.

  A Presbyterian elder from Ithaca pronounced: “This is the proverbial biblical goliath, perhaps a descendant of the warrior Anak or the sheep shearer Nabal. Clearly these goliaths were not limited to Palestine, but walked all the continents of God’s green earth.”

  An expert on Indians said he was proof of an ancient tribal legend of a giant warrior. A Yale biblical scholar said it was a Phoenician idol, proof America was discovered centuries before Columbus, or even Christ. The evidence was cloudy, yet c
lear: he was whatever the beholder wanted to believe he was.

  Before the week was out, the Giant had a slew of newspaper nicknames—American Goliath, LaFayette Wonder, Onondaga Colossus—printed in rag sheets coast-to-coast.

  Two thousand people a day were now coming to Cardiff. Hull was too greedy to shut down. Then Mr. David Hannum of Syracuse First National Bank arrived in a velvet-curtained carriage and Hull’s scheme grew exponentially. The banker asked for an immediate viewing as people in line cursed about fairness. He had a proposition, he said. He walked around the Giant, even poked it in the ribs with his pearl-handled cane. He studied it, absently twirling his graying muttonchops, then scratched out some math in his ledger. He and four partners were willing to buy three-quarters of the Giant for $25,000, with Hull and Stubby keeping 25 percent. They would take the Giant on the road, to be exhibited in museums and convention halls. First stop would be Syracuse, then Albany, then New York City itself. Then west to Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, and all the way out to San Francisco.

  I pretended to do some math scratching of my own, and asked for $50,000, with all due respect, Hull wrote. Mr. Hannum thought $40,000 could be arranged and we hand-shook, sealing the deal between honorable men until the contracts could be drawn.

  Had I waited a couple of weeks, I could have sold the Giant outright to Mr. P. T. Barnum, who wired me a deal for $70,000 sight unseen.

  * * *

  THE GIANT WAS EXTRACTED from his grave by winches and pulleys and the muscle of four oxen—He rose like a dandelion in the breeze, all feathery and air-light, Hull wrote. He ascended like magician’s trickery, up he went like a cloud wisp instead of a ton and a half of carved gypsum—and was brought by wagon to the Bestable Arcade in downtown Syracuse for two weeks in November. A cross-town trolley line was built from rail station to exhibit hall to accommodate the crowds.

  Next stop was Geological Hall in Albany, where state legislators turned out en masse for the opening, with the Giant laid out on a sturdy wooden platform draped in deep purple velvet, worthy of a royal funeral. People came alone or in groups, from churches, ethical societies, and naturalist clubs. Artists came with sketch pads and notepads, leaving charcoal dust on the hall floor.

  One constant visitor was Dr. James Hall, the state geologist. His first pronouncement that the Giant was “the most remarkable object brought to light in this country” had caused him woe in scientific circles, so he was determined to make a more clear-eyed, science-based finding on the Giant’s origin.

  He now scrutinized the Giant’s every surface, noting the lack of nostrils, eardrums, and oral and anal cavities, and wondered how soft tissue of the penis, ears, fingers, and toes could have survived normal decomposition.

  One morning he appeared with a loupe, and went over the Giant’s surface like jewelers looking for flaws in a diamond, Hull wrote. The next morning he came with rock chisels and chipping hammers and glass specimen containers.

  “You can’t damage this!” I cried. “It is a natural wonder of the world!”

  “Save it for your rubes!” Hall snapped at me. “I’m a man of science. I’ll determine how wondrous this monster is.”

  But it didn’t take long for Hall to identify the Giant’s flesh as gypsum.

  It was, without question, never human, he concluded. Nor is it ancient. “Upon further study, I amend my earlier ascertainment of ‘remarkable discovery.’ I say now it is of very recent vintage, a sculpture, not a fossilized human. I now question if it was ‘buried’ with the sole purpose of hoodwinking the public.”

  None of this mattered to Barnum, who made more overtures toward the Giant consortium. After his first offer of $70,000 was rebuffed, Barnum came back with $100,000.

  Barnum was looking to the Giant to breathe new life into his burned-out American Museum, his “fairyland mixture of wonder,” where the main attractions were the human freaks: Joice Heth, the 161-year-old nanny of George Washington; Constentenus, the tattooed man, a Greek prince imprisoned by the Khan of Kashagar and tortured by branding; Fedor Jeftichew, known as Jo-Jo, the Dog-faced Boy; Josephine Boisdechene, known as Madame Clofullia, the Bearded Lady; and Zip the Pinhead—whose skull was shaped like a football and who was billed as “A Missing Link and Wild Negro from the Darkest Jungles of Africa.”

  They were all there to astonish and entertain, and Barnum saw the Giant the same way. What was it? Barnum didn’t care. Controversy equaled publicity and publicity brought customers. Even proof of fraud wouldn’t kill the Giant. People would then line up to see the spectacle that had fooled so many. Yes, in time, Barnum knew, the public would become satiated, but not before he could turn a nice profit. And once the long lines diminished and the Giant fluttered down from sensation to curiosity to historical artifact, Barnum would retire him to a well-lit, cozy corner of the museum, and let him rest as testament to what once was.

  Barnum met with investors in Albany, and Hannum began to proudly lay out the West Coast swing, after New York.

  Barnum tapped his cane and interrupted, Hull wrote. “Gentlemen, this is why you need me!” he cried. “You see the nation. P. T. Barnum sees the world! What about London, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, Istanbul, Persia, Bombay, Peking, Japan? The Holy Land itself. Are we not all humans? Wouldn’t the world stand on line to look into the darkest abyss of history and find a true specimen of the Lost Race of Giants?”

  Barnum pulled a contract from his inside pocket.

  “The figure below,” Barnum said, “is not a misprint. It does indeed say two hundred thousand dollars for my majority ownership of the Giant . . . more than I paid Joice Heth, General Thumb, and Zip the Pinhead put together! I’m confident he will bring more revenue than the tour I put together for Jenny Lind, without nearly as much overhead. The Giant, for one, does not require a different silk gown each night.”

  I implored my partners to take the money. Hannum was the first to object. “If P. T. Barnum is telling us it’s worth that much, it must be worth double.”

  “The iron will never be hotter than it is now,” I said. “And remember, we have men of science scouring our find. I say sell. I say let Barnum take the risk.”

  “The risk of what?” Hannum asked.

  “The risk that our Goliath might be, in fact, an ancient manmade thing,” I said, teetering on the edge of confession. “An archaeological artifact, nothing more.”

  “Let the debate continue!” Hannum said. “It only puts more asses in the seats!”

  In the end, the partners outvoted Hull again. Barnum neatly refolded the contract and returned pen and paper to his breast pocket.

  We told Barnum we rejected his final offer, Hull wrote, and what came next, we should have seen coming.

  “Well then, gentlemen, you leave me no recourse but to find my own giant,” Barnum told us.

  “That’s preposterous!” bellowed Hannum.

  “Is it?” Barnum asked. “By whose standards? Not mine, sir. Surely you don’t believe your Giant wandered this earth alone. There must have been a Mrs. Giant, and little Giants. And a grandpappy and grandma Giant. Somewhere out there is a colony of giants, all resting below the surface waiting to be discovered, studied, and scrutinized, waiting to help us peer down the dark, foreboding corridors of our ancestry, to shed light on our own beginnings.”

  The words had not escaped his mouth when I realized Mr. Barnum was way ahead of us. He had his own giant. He made a giant the way I made my Giant, and got one better. A Mr. and Mrs. Giant, a family of Giants. A phony consortium of scientists to claim their veracity. My mind was reeling in this direction when Barnum announced:

  “And I will guarantee I find my giant before you bring your Giant to New York next month. In fact, I guarantee my giant will outdraw your Giant when they go head-to-head in New York.”

  Hannum dismissed Barnum’s braggadocio with a wave of his hand.

  “The only reason, sir, your Giant will attract anyone,” Hannum said, “is because there is a sucker born every minute.”


  “Hah!” Barnum erupted in laughter. “A sucker born every minute. Oh, I like that. I think I’ll procure that, too!”

  Barnum had already commissioned the famed New York sculptor Franz Otto to carve his giant out of black marble, a shiny, mineral-rich stone from New England far more exotic than the original’s bland Iowa gypsum. Barnum wanted a giant with an aura of primitive culture: a petrified Zip the Pinhead, so to speak. The Cardiff Giant was scheduled to arrive in New York for the holidays at Apollo Hall, an ornate theater two blocks from Barnum’s museum. Barnum, the thunder stealer, unveiled his giant to the hungry public and a well-fed press on December 6, 1869, one week before the Cardiff Giant arrived.

  At the press luncheon for his specimen, he denounced the Cardiff Giant as “pure humbug! Look at the details of the man my scientists have unearthed. While men of science question the veracity of the Cardiff specimen, my team of scientists have authenticated the specimen you see before you.”

  It was Hannum’s idea to sue P. T. Barnum for slander and fraud, Hull wrote. I wanted nothing to do with it. True, his giant was a fake. But asking the court for a cease-and-desist order preventing Barnum from exhibiting his giant would bring more scrutiny to the origins of our Giant.

  I knew things would not go well for us, when the Honorable Elias Wilkerson opened the proceedings by saying, “Good to see you again, Mr. Barnum.”

  And here, Barnum turned the tables on the partners once again.

  Barnum admitted his giant was “unearthed” in a quarry in Danby, Vermont, and said the “scientific light to be shed” was about the new science of geology.