February 13, 2013 - Wessington 'Petrified Indian'

Continuing with the sharing of news articles that have been sent to me.  There is no date on this one.  It is written by Mrs. Cora Anderson, whom I have no connection with.  The town where this event happened was Wessington, South Dakota, home of my ancestors.  A rather long, but very interesting tale.  I wonder who some of the other businessmen were...besides the barber, mentioned at the end of the story.

Back in 1893, Wessington Men Laid Down $5,000 For "Petrified Indian"

"The South Dakota 'petrified man', a hoax perpetrated upon a group of Wessington businessmen to the extent of $5,000, is long gone from here but his memory lingers on and every once in a while one of the townspeople will start off an interesting cracker-barrel discussion with the question: 'Say, do you remember the story about the petrified man?'

The South Dakota 'petrified man' story began with the 'discovery' of the body neart Forest City, on the Little Cheyenne River bluffs, by William Horn, a lime-burner, in his search for limestone.  A few days after it was reported to have been carefully exhumed, a team of horses was observed traveling along the Chicago and North Western Railroad right of way , coming from the direction of Pierre.

Three men dressed as cowboys occupied the wagon.  They had a tent and other paraphernalia.  It was the spring of 1893, the same year as the World's Fair in Chicago, the Columbian Exposition.  The group stopped briefly in Miller and then drove on to Wessington where they stopped one night.

They stayed at the Albert House livery barn, one-half block east of Wessington's main street, and somehow managed to convey a sense of mystery about their outfit.

When the three men went to a cafe to eat, curiosity overcame the scruples of the liverymen.  One of them poked and peeked into the wagon.  He saw the body of a man!  He felt of it and punched it and found it hard as stone!  He lost no time in spreading the news of his discovery.

That night a group of Wessington businessmen met together and fed each other's excitement about the possibility of reaping a rich harvest if the 'stone man' could be purchased from the cowboys and exhibited at the World's Fair in Chicago and throughout the country.  P.T. Barnum's famous fraud, 'The Cardiff Giant' was receiving national acclaim at the time.

Next day, the town was crackling with excitement and hopeful expectation, but the three cowboys and the stone man had left for Huron.  Two Wessington men were designated to pursue them and make them an offer.

They found the group on East Third Street in Huron, ballyhooing their show and selling tickets for admission to see the 'petrified Indian found in the Bad Lands of South Dakota.'  Arthur Mellette, then territorial governor, was among the many who visited the show and all were thrilled by the spectacle.

The two Wessington spokesmen approached the cowboys who confessed that they were on their way to the World's Fair to exhibit the petrified Indian, but would sell their pride and joy and money-maker for $10,000 cash.  The Wessington pair countered with an offer of $5,000.  Neither would budge in the bargaining.  

But the Wessington pair stayed on and cultivated the acquaintance of the cowboys further in convenient soft drink emporiums.  The evening's camarderie brought the price down to $5,000 and Wessington had the petrified man.

A company was formed and several businessmen bought shares in the $5,000 stone man.  None of them are now alive in Wessington.  The new owners sent the stone man to the World's Fair to an agent, bonding the stone man for $1,000 for its safe return.

The Chicagoan was not as convinced of the petrification as the Wessingtonians, however, and the drilling with an augur into the body convinced him and others that it was all a clever hoax.  But it still went on exhibition at the World's Fair and made a little money.  Then it was shipped back to Wolsey, from Chicago.

Gradually, the truth developed, and Doane Robinson, early historian of South Dakota, even chronicled it in Volume I of the History of South Dakota.

The idea was first conceived, he found, by one William Sutton, a local butcher at Forest City, who took into his confidence a young doctor from Redfield.  The success of Barnum with the Cardiff Giant, a petrified man later proved fraudulent, had fired Sutton's imagination.  There was even a rumor that he had at one time worked in the Barnum circus.

Later, lime burner William Horn and James Sutton joined William Sutton and the nameless Redfield doctor.  The four went to Redfield where James Sutton permitted use of his body as a model from which the doctor made a cast.  A human skeleton obtained by some devious method was placed in the cast and then filled out with cement.

The Suttons and Horn took the body overland to Forest City and planted it on the edge of the Little Cheyenne River.  In due time, William Horn in his 'search' for limestone, found the body again.  The three cowboys who passed through Wessington were Horn and two Suttons.

The Milwaukee Railroad had the petrified man on its hands for awhile, lying in storage in the Wolsey depot.  Finally it persuaded one of the then disinterested owners in Wessington to pay a sizable storage charge on the fraud and remove it.

The last anyone in Wessington knew of the Forest City petrified man was when William Fenton, a barber in Wessington, moved to Cherry County, Illinois, and took the stone man with him."