"The joy in believing" The Cardiff giant, commercial deceptions, and styles of observation in gilded age America

ISIS

Volumn 97, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 659-677

  Pettit, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; FOSSIL; GIGANTISM; HISTORY; HUMAN; RECUMBENCY; RELIGION; SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT; UNITED STATES;

CULTURE; DECEPTION; FOSSILS; GIGANTISM; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; NEW YORK; RELIGION AND SCIENCE; SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT;

EID: 33847279379     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/509948     Document Type: Article

References (148)

1. On the history of observation see Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990);
2. Lorraine Daston, "Attention and the Values of Nature in the Enlightenment," in The Moral Authority of Nature, ed. Daston and Fernando Vidal (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 100-126;
3. and Ardis Cameron, ed., Looking for America: The Visual Production of Nation and People (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
4. On the visual pedagogy of nineteenth-century popular science see Bernard Lightman, "The Visual Theology of Victorian Popularizers of Science: From Reverent Eye to Chemical Retina," Isis, 2000, 91:651-680.
5. In this essay I use "epistemology" as shorthand not for the evaluation of the foundations of knowledge but, rather, to point toward historically specific and culturally supported ways of knowing. See A. C. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition: The History of Argument and Explanation, Especially in the Mathematical and Biomedical Sciences and Arts (London: Duckworth, 1994);
6. Lorraine Daston, "The Moral Economy of Science," Osiris, N.S., 1995, 10:3-24;
7. John V. Pickstone, Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2000);
8. Daston, ed., Biographies of Scientific Objects (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2000);
9. and Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2002).
10. W. A. McKinney, "The History of the Cardiff Giant Hoax," New Englander, 1875, 34:759-769, on p. 759.
11. Ibid., p. 766.
12. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (New York: Zone, 1998).
13. On the persistence of this sentiment in the staging of and responses to American commercialized displays of science, nature, and religion see John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989);
14. David E. Nye. American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995);
15. Andrea Stulman Dennett, Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1997);
16. Eric Leigh Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000);
17. and Fred Nadis, Wonder Shows: Performing Science, Magic, and Religion in America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2005).
18. I have greatly benefited from two earlier accounts of the hoax, both rich in detail: Barbara Franco, "The Cardiff Giant: A Hundred Year Old Hoax," New York History, 1969, 50:421-440;
19. and Elizabeth Pritchard Stewart, "Who Shall Decide When Doctors Disagree? Hoaxes and American Men of Science in the Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss., American Univ., 2003), pp. 169-242. Franco's aim was to situate the event in the region's history. While Stewart suggestively discusses how the giant could have been used by Americans to negotiate the meaning of Darwinian evolution, her analysis tends to place hoaxing too firmly in a context of "progress" toward professionalization.
20. Alain Corbin, "A History and Anthropology of the Senses," in Time, Desire, and Horror: Towards a History of the Senses, trans. Jean Berrill (1991; Cambridge: Polity, 1995), pp. 181-195, on p. 186.
21. On new understandings of popular science see Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture," History of Science, 1994, 32:237-267.
22. For Britain see Bernard Lightman, "'Voices of Nature': Popularizing Victorian Science," in Victorian Science in Context, ed. Lightman (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 187-211;
23. Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1998);
24. and James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2000).
25. For the American case see Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999);
26. and Katherine Pandora, "Knowledge Held in Common: Tales of Luther Burbank and Science in the American Vernacular," Isis, 2001, 92:484-516.
27. On the emergence of scientific professionalism see Richard H. Shryock, "American Indifference to Basic Research during the Nineteenth Century," Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 1948, 28:50-65;
28. A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap, 1957);
29. and Nathan Reingold, "American Indifference to Basic Research: A Reappraisal," in Science, American Style (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 54-75.
30. Regarding the new interest in and enthusiasm for nature see Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "Parlors, Primers, and Public Schooling: Education for Science in Nineteenth-Century America," Isis, 1990, 81:425-445;
31. Margaret Welch, The Book of Nature: Natural History in the United States, 1825-1875 (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1998);
32. Christopher Irmscher, The Poetics of Natural History: From John Bartram to William James (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1999);
33. and Philip Pauly, Biologists and the Promise of American Life: From Meriwether Lewis to Alfred Kinsey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000).
34. On museums and other exhibits see Kohlstedt, "Curiosities and Cabinets: Natural History Museums and Education on the Antebellum Campus," Isis, 1988, 79:405-426;
35. Joel J. Orosz, Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870 (Tuscaloosa: Univ. Alabama Press, 1990);
36. Dennett, Weird and Wonderful (cit. n. 4);
37. and Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1998).
38. James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2001);
39. and Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Boston: Little Brown, 1973).
40. Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York/London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 279-280.
41. In addition to Cook, Arts of Deception, and Harris, Humbug, other key studies of Barnum include A. H. Saxon, P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1989);
42. Buford Adams, E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of U.S. Popular Culture (Minneapolis: Univ. Minnesota Press, 1997);
43. and Benjamin Reiss, The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2001).
44. P. T. Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum (New York: Redfield, 1855), pp. 230-242, on p. 232.
45. See also Harris, Humbug, Ch. 3;
46. and Cook, Arts of Deception, Ch. 2.
47. Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988);
48. and John Harley Warner, "The Rise and Fall of Professional Mystery: Epistemology, Authority, and the Emergence of Laboratory Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America," in The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, ed. Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 310-341.
49. Sven Beckert, "Democracy and Its Discontents: Contesting Suffrage Rights in Gilded Age New York," Past and Present, 2002, 174:116-157;
50. and Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow.
51. On the elitist orientation of American social thought see Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991).
52. William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1993);
53. and David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).
54. On the market revolution see Charles G. Sellars, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991);
55. and Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996).
56. On its relationship to the rise of evangelical Christianity see Whitney Cross, The Burnt-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1950);
57. Paul Johnston, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978);
58. and Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: Univ. Illinois Press, 1984).
59. On the persistence of religious belief see James Gilbert, Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1997);
60. and Jon Butler, "Jack-in-the-Box Faith: The Religion Problem in Modern American History," Journal of American History, 2003, 90:1357-1378.
61. "Letter of Dr. Boynton," Syracuse Daily Standard, 21 Oct. 1869, topical files of newspaper clippings, Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, New York (hereafter cited as OHA files).
62. The letter is reprinted in The American Goliah [sic]: A Wonderful Geological Discovery, 2nd ed. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Redington & Howe, 1869), p. 6.
63. American Goliah, p. 10;
64. "The Lafayette Wonder," Syracuse Daily Journal, 22 Oct. 1869, OHA files;
65. and "A New Wonder! Petrified Giant" Syracuse Daily Standard, 18 Oct. 1869, OHA files (on Clarke's visit).
66. For Clarke's status as a respected temperance advocate see "Obituary - John A. Clarke," ibid., 21 Sept. 1872, OHA files.
67. Maurice Mandelbaum, History, Man, and Reason: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1971).
68. See "The Lafayette Wonder: Results of Further Investigation," Syracuse Daily Journal, 10 Oct. 1869, OHA files;
69. and the undated handbill Dimensions of the Great Onondaga Giant, Cardiff Giant Records 2002.84, Folder 1, Onondaga Historical Association. On the role of American naturalists and anthropologists see Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981), pp. 30-72;
70. Robert Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at America's World Exhibitions, 1876-1916 (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1984);
71. Robert E. Bieder, "The Representations of Indian Bodies in Nineteenth-Century American Anthropology," American Indian Quarterly, 1996, 20:165-179;
72. Curtis M. Hinsley, "Digging for Identity: Reflections on the Cultural Background of Collecting," ibid., pp. 180-196;
73. Stewart, "Who Shall Decide When Doctors Disagree?" (cit. n. 5), pp. 178-194;
74. and Megan Highet, "Body Snatching and Grave Robbing: Bodies for Science," History and Anthropology, 2005, 16:415-440.
75. See also Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2001).
76. See "Amusements: Franklin Institute Lectures," Syracuse Daily Standard, 11 Nov. 1869, OHA files.
77. On the work of the medical reformers see Charles Rosenberg, "Catechism of Health: The Body in the Prebellum Classroom," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1995, 69:175-197;
78. Michael Sappol, A Traffic in Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002);
79. and Margaret Lock, Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2002).
80. Andrew Dickson White, "The Cardiff Giant: The True Story of a Remarkable Deception," Century Magazine, 1902, pp. 948-955, on pp. 951, 950-951.
81. For a sense of the disparate historical meanings of experience see Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1995);
82. and Michelle Murphy, "Immodest Witnessing: The Epistemology of Vaginal Self-Examination in the U.S. Feminist Self-Help Movement," Feminist Studies, 2004, 30:115-147.
83. "Elaborate Description of the Cardiff Colossus," rpt. in Syracuse Daily Standard, 30 Nov. 1869, OHA files;
84. "The Lafayette Wonder," Syracuse Journal, 22 Oct. 1869, OHA files;
85. and American Goliah (cit. n. 15), pp. 30 (Leavenworth), 5 (Boynton).
86. Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (cit. n. 4).
87. "The Lafayette Wonder," Syracuse Journal, 22 Oct. 1869, OHA files;
88. "From a Reader of the Standard," Syracuse Standard, 20 Nov. 1869, OHA files;
89. The Autobiography of the Great Curiosity: The Cardiff Stone Giant, Lately Discovered on the Newell Farm, 2nd ed. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Hitchcock & Smith, [1869]), p. 13;
90. and "The Onondaga Giant," Syracuse Journal, 26 Oct. 1869, OHA files (rumor about the French Canadian laborer).
91. "The Petrified Giant," Syracuse Daily Standard, 19 Oct. 1869, OHA files (noting the earlier cases of rapid petrification);
92. and "How the Giant Was Petrified," ibid., 1 Nov. 1869, OHA files (quotation).
93. See the contracts in Cardiff Giant Records 2002.84, Folder 9, Onondaga Historical Association.
94. White, "Cardiff Giant" (cit. n. 20), p. 949.
95. For White's struggle to establish Cornell University as secular and nonsectarian see Andrew Dickson White, My Reminiscences of Ezra Cornell: An Address Delivered before the Cornell University on Founder's Day, January 11th, 1890 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ., 1890).
96. See also James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 30-36.
97. White, "Cardiff Giant," p. 950.
98. "The Lafayette Wonder," Syracuse Journal, 22 Oct. 1869, OHA files;
99. and "The Stone Giant," Syracuse Daily Standard, 4 Nov. 1969, OHA Files.
100. White, "Cardiff Giant" (cit. n. 20), p. 950;
101. and "The Onondaga Giant," Syracuse Journal, 26 Oct. 1869, OHA files (quotation).
102. On the ideal of civility in early modern scientific interactions see Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1994).
103. "Letter of Hon. Geo. Geddes," Syracuse Standard, 21 Oct. 1869, OHA files;
104. and Barnum, Life of P. T. Barnum (cit. n. 10), pp. 230-242.
105. American Goliah (cit. n. 15), p. 27 (quotation);
106. and "The Stone Giant," Syracuse Daily Standard, 10 Nov. 1869, OHA files.
107. Marsh's judgment is cited in White, "Cardiff Giant" (cit. n. 20), p. 951.
108. "The Onondaga Giant," Syracuse Daily Standard, 11 Nov. 1869, OHA files (on Barnum's arrival in Cardiff);
109. and McKinney, "History of the Cardiff Giant Hoax" (cit. n. 2), p. 768 (on the success of his forgery).
110. Amos Gillett, D. H. Hannum, W. C. Newell, and A. Westcott, "The Cardiff Giant Not in Town - Card to the Public," New York Times, 13 Dec. 1869, p. 8;
111. and McKinney, "History of the Cardiff Giant Hoax," p. 768.
112. It appears that no scientific experts testified at the trial; rather, the court's decision was grounded in its own legal epistemology. On the law's knowledge practices see Mariana Valverde, The Law's Dream of a Common Knowledge (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003).
113. Emerson and Cobb are cited in McKinney, "History of the Cardiff Giant Hoax," p. 768;
114. and G. A. Stockwell, M.D., "The Cardiff Giant and Other Frauds," Popular Science Monthly, 1878, 13:197-203, on p. 200.
115. "The Cardiff Giant," Syracuse Daily Standard, 11 Dec. 1869, OHA files.
116. more detailed account was provided in the anonymous The Cardiff Giant Humbug: A Complete and Thorough Exposition of the Greatest Deception of the Age (Fort Dodge, Iowa: North West Books and Job Printing Establishment, 1870).
117. Elizabeth Stewart insightfully suggests that Barnum may have orchestrated Hull's confession for the sake of publicizing the New York exhibits; see Stewart, "Who Shall Decide When Doctors Disagree?" (cit. n. 5), p. 127.
118. "Made the Cardiff Giant," New York Sun, 24 Dec. 1898, OHA files.
119. See also the interview published in Arthur T. Vance, The Real David Harum (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1900), pp. 76-90. The titular character in E. N. Westcott's novel David Harum (1898) was based on one of the investors in the giant; another investor was Westcott's father. The giant is not mentioned in the novel.
120. Stockwell, "Cardiff Giant and Other Frauds" (cit. n. 35), p. 200.
121. On the confidence man see Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1982).
122. Stockwell, "Cardiff Giant and Other Frauds," p. 203.
123. "From Superstition to Humbug," Science, 16 Nov. 1883,2(41):637-639, on p. 637.
124. See also Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1995).
125. "From Superstition to Humbug," p. 637.
126. Mark Jaffe, The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science (New York: Crown, 2000).
127. On Ward's later work see, e.g., P. T. Barnum to Henry Ward, 24 Oct. 1885, in The Selected Letters of P. T. Barrow, ed. A. H. Saxon (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1983), p. 274.
128. On the naturalist as entrepreneur see Mark V. Barrow, "The Specimen Dealer: Entrepreneurial Natural History in America's Gilded Age," Journal of the History of Biology, 2000, 23:493-534.
129. Barnum to Joseph Henry, 17 Apr. 1873, in Selected Letters of P. T. Barnum, ed. Saxon, p. 175;
130. and Spencer F. Baird to Barnum, 1 May 1883, ibid., p. 238.
131. See also Barnum to Baird, 9 Dec. 1884, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C., U.S. National Museum Permanent Administration Files, 1877-1975, Record Unit 192, Box 637, File 209237.
132. Barnum to Baird, 11 Apr. 1883, in Selected Letters of P. T. Barnum, ed. Saxon, p. 233.
133. Regarding the museum at Tufts see "Agreement for the Barnum Museum of Natural History," ibid., p. 235.
134. Daniel Goldstein, "'Yours for Science': The Smithsonian Institution's Correspondents and the Shape of Scientific Community in Nineteenth-Century America," Isis, 1994, 84:573-599.
135. For an account of the professionalizing process see J. B. Morrell, "Professionalization," in Companion to the History of Modern Science, ed. R. C. Olby, G. N. Cantor, J. J. R. Christie, and M. J. S. Hodge (London/New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 980-989.
136. Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (London: Allen Lane, 1999);
137. and Suzanne K. Kaufman, Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell Univ. Press, 2005).
138. On the giant as an analogous site of miraculous healing see "Letter from Cardiff," Syracuse Daily Standard, 10 Oct. 1869, OHA files.
139. Patricia C. Click, "High Technology Meets the Spiritual: Objectivity, Popular Opinion, and the Shroud of Turin," Journal of Popular Culture, 1988, 21:13-23;
140. and Stephen Williams, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
141. David Hurst Thomas, Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity (New York: Basic, 2000).
142. On the pseudo-populism that sustains the debate over intelligent design see Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan, 2004).
143. White, "Cardiff Giant" (cit. n. 20), pp. 951, 953, 950-951.
144. See Frank Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 151-200.
145. Stockwell, "Cardiff Giant and Other Frauds" (cit. n. 35), p. 200.
146. In contrast, Stewart sees the giant and related anthropological hoaxes as populist parodies of naturalism that scientific professionalism ultimately shut down; see Stewart, "Who Shall Decide When Doctors Disagree?" (cit. n. 5), pp. 231-233. The debates over intelligent design and the Kennewick Man illuminate how the democracy of knowledge remains a powerful norm in the United States.
147. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 13-48;
148. and Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1896), Vol. 1, p. viii.