Experiences of a Croatian Oysterman in Louisiana

In my interviews with Croatian oystermen in Louisiana I asked several of them to narrate their experiences and hardships of becoming expert oystermen. Marko Cibilic's story was the most detailed and interesting and I feel that it covers an important period (1910-1950) in the story of Croatian Emigration; therefore it is hereby reproduced as narrated to me, Milos Vujnovich.

CIBILICH, MARKO: was born on May 26, 1897 in a small fishing and farming village of Duba on the Peljesac peninsula in Southern Dalmatia. I spent my childhood years there in carefree, playing, fishing, and attending school. One day in 1909 our neighbor Ante Cibilic arrived from America to visit his family. In the course of his stay in Duba he paid us several visits, and it was from him that I first heard of Louisiana; of the mighty Mississippi River and the endless Delta where oysters grew in limitless quantities. Two years after his arrival to Duba he decided to return to Louisiana and resume his oyster fishing. It was then that my parents informed me for the first time that I was to go to America with M. Cibilic. (This was, I later learned the standard procedure for the young boys of my age from our parts to travel to America; with an uncle or an older relative who was returning to Louisiana and was therefore considered an experienced traveler.) Their answer to the astonished look on my face, was that I had no future here; that as soon as I reached the age of twenty-one I would be drafted in to the Austrian Armed Forces for four years. Neither my feelings nor my wishes were considered. I was simply told that I was going to America; perhaps to be forever separated from my parents, childhood friends and familiar surroundings.

The day of departure (October 20, 1911) soon arrived and my heart was about to break with sorrow at leaving my home and parents for the first time. Stoically I kept the tears back until my mother gave me a last embrace exclaiming, “Sinko hocu 1i te igda vise vidit?” (Son, will I ever see you again?). Then I could no longer hold my tears but gave full vent to my supressed emotions. In the nearby port of Trpanj we took the coastal steamer SpIit to Trieste where we boarded the American ship Martha Washington which took us to New York. On November 15 we boarded a train to Louisiana. In my pocket I had a passport and a piece of paper with my name, destination, and occupation (oyster fisherman).

Fortunately, the train did not go to Bayou Cook or else I would not have seen New Orleans for the next four years. At the station Mr. Cibilic engaged a hackney cab which took us to John Porobil's boarding house near the famous French Market. There I met several of my relatives from Duba and vicinity, and the host's son Jack took me to the center of New Orleans (Canal Street) and to a movie show-the first in my life. Needless to say, all this bewildered me. Next day

my newly acquired friends took me to the Mississippi River front; to Conti Street Landing where the oyster luggers brought the oysters from the Louisiana bayous. There I met Capt. Vlaho Jurisic who took me aboard his stern-wheeler Gem, with which he brought oysters from Bayou Cook to the New Orleans market. The Gem was one of the first motorized oyster luggers so, naturally, Capt. Jurisic was proud of his boat and proudly showed me the engine and explained how the stern wheel propels the boat. Early the following day my travelling companion Ante Cibilic and I boarded the Gem to get a load of oysters for the return trip to New Orleans. We travelled down the Mississippi River at a fast pace because the current was with us. Capt. Jurisic took me to the pilot's cabin and explained the sights along both banks as we passed them. As we neared the sixty-mile point he pointed to a shipyard which belonged to a fellow Croatian, Valerian Zuvic where most of the oyster boats were built. He told us that the last sailboat for oysters, the Cupido, was recently built there for Donko Stuk.

Soon after we entered the Empire locks, which connected the Douluth Canal to the Mississippi River about 60 miles south of New Orleans and were enclosed from all four sides by solid walls. Not to show my apprehension and ignorance I kept quiet but wondered what was hapenning, until I realized the differences in the water levels between the river and the canal and that this was an ingenious way to let the boats pass through without letting the river flood the low areas. Near the canal lived Vincent Pausina's family and Capt. Jurisic informed me that they would like to see me and hear about their relatives from Vrucica, and that I had about twenty minutes before he had to move on. I was received warmly and bombarded with questions about their cousins, that aunt and this uncle and so on. But Gem's whistle cut my conversation short and I had to rush back to the boat.

Slowly we churned our way along. We passed many an oyster camp and each time Capt. Vlaho would call out the owner's name, so and so and all of them are Croatians like us who came here to this mosquito infested wilderness to eke out a living. The first camp belonged to John and Ante Cibilic; the second to Donko Stuk; the third to Peter Stipeljkovic and so on and on. Some of the camps were about one half-mile apart while others were in clusters of two and three.

As we entered Bayou Cook I realized that I had reached my destination. I took the paper from my pocket with the Bayou Cook address on it and threw it overboard. As we pulled up along a wharf of a typical oyster camp I saw my brother Bozo, whom I had not seen for three years, running to meet us. We embraced emotionally as brothers do in a far-away land. That evening several of my relatives gathered at the camp to hear the latest news from Duba. They barraged me with questions just about everything they could think of. Then and there I detectated a feeling of homesickness in many of them, even though they were in Louisiana for only several years. Many were in America in body, but in spirit they were still in Duba with their dear ones. Some of them silently looked me over, probably judging me and guessing what kind of an oysterman I would make. They were primarily interested in any new songs composed since they left the Old Country. For, as I later observed, they loved to sing while they worked and sailed.

During the previous few days I encountered new experiences and adventures and I did not think of my parents, but when I retired that night, loneliness and longing for them overcame me and I realized that I was on my own; that my parents were not around to comfort me and to cheer me up with encouraging words. That night I fell asleep with tears in my eyes longing for my parents and familiar surroundings. Next morning when I awoke and remembered the sensations of the night before, I resolved to bear all the hardships stoically, remembering my father’s parting words, “Remember, wherever you go, and whatever hardships you may meet, be strong and face them like a soldier”. I arose at an hour I thought was early but my brother, his co-worker and Ivan (who was to play such an important role in transforming me from a greenhorn to an able oysterman), were already tonging oysters from an oyster bed about two hundred yards from the camp. The oysters were placed in a flat-bottomed skiff.

As I was drinking coffee I noticed a large pot on the charcoal fire. I peeked inside and saw that they were cooking red beans for early lunch. On a nearby table I noticed four large chunks smoked meat (bacon). At about seven o'clock Ivan came to the camp, washed the bacon and put it into the pan, fed the fire with fresh coals and told me that henceforth cooking and keeping house would be my job, and in between that I was to learn oyster fishing. Flabbergasted and bewildered I realized that he was serious and fear overtook me, but remembering my resolve of that morning I said nothing but decided to do my best. I realized that my tender age (14 years) meant nothing to them and that I was to be treated like a full grown adult. An hour of so later Ivan returned and put to cook the spaghetti with the beans and bacon and instructed me to set the table and stir the beans and spaghetti every few minutes. Then he went back to the large skiff and a few minutes later ferried my brother and the other worker, with a small skiff, to the camp where they washed, sat down and they silently at their mid-day meal. By ten o'clock they returned to oyster tonging while I washed the dishes and started to clean the camp.

Early next morning, or rather, late that night Ivan woke me up, called me to the kitchen and instructed me how to light the coal fire, make coffee and prepare the beans and bacon for cooking. But we had beans yesterday, I exclaimed. Then he proceeded to explain to me the importance of red beans, that during the winter months, that is, during the oyster season red beans are the most important fare for the oystermen; that sometimes they are cooked with spaghetti, sometimes with lasagne, and sometimes, with rice. So it was day in and day out. The evening meal varied, and we ate whatever was avialable: oysters, fish, shrimp, and when the freight boat arrived from the city we got fresh meat. A pitcher of wine and a pitcher of water were everpresent on the table. Wine was the daily bewerage of oystermen but they drank it diluted with water as they were accustomed at their ancestors' tables back in the Old Country.

The next morning an alarm clock woke me up an hour before daybreak so that when the others got up the coffee was already made and the beans were cooking. Amd so I started my apprenticeship in the oyster industry; kept house for the oyster workers, washed their clothes and was scolded if I used too much water because was limited to what the camp roof could catch and the cisterns hold. Clothes were washed in one tub and rinsed in the other; the rinse water was used to scrub the camp and the gallery floor which was done every few days.

Of all the jobs that I had to do, the one that I hated most was roasting coffee in a closed cylindrical container and rotating it over an open coal or wood fire. My mentor, Ivan, supervised everything I did; if he approved he smiled, but if he did not, he frowned. His face was the barometer of my work. However, as the months passed by, the frequency of his smiles increased. Many a time during those greenhorn months I longed for my carefree childhood back in Duba which was cut off too soon and which was but only a few months removed.

My happiest days were when the freight boat, Gem, arrived to take our oysters to New Orleans and to unload the supplies. It seemed that almost everything was purchased by the sack: onions, potatoes, hardtacks, red beans, green coffee, rice and so on. Spaghetti came in boxes, wine in fifty-gallon barrels, and canned goods by cases.

As soon as I finished my household chores I would join the rest of the workers in order to learn how to tong the oysters, push the skiffs with long poles, and to cul oysters with a gloved hand holding a cluster of oysters, and with a small hatchet in the other hand, separating the oyster clusters into single marketable oysters. Soon my muscles ached and my hands blistered. Sometimes when Ivan and others became impatient with my clumsiness and lost their short Dalmatian tempers, I would become hopelessly frustrated. Often I wondered whether they were mean or whether I was too sensitive. During the oyster season-from September through May we worked seven days a week, from the first rays of light in the morning to complete darkness in the evening, stopping only to eat and sleep. I marveled how easy all this seemed to my co-workers. They sang as they worked. I often wondered if I would ever acquire their skill and optimistic outlook in this bleak life. I also wondered if the other youngsters before me, going through similar stages, felt like this. This endless homesickness! One day I finally confilded to Ivan, but instead of him laughing at me as I feared, he seriously informed me that he and all the others have had the same feelings; that they diminish with time but never disappear entirely. Then he encouraged me to persevere and I would get used to this life - which after a year or two I finally did.

However, there were a few happy and pleasant moments when I realized that I was finally accepted as one of them and treated equally by being asked to perform same tasks when Ivan and I sailed the skill to and from the oyster bedding grounds. He would give me the tiller and insist that I sail the boat, telling me that I can't consider myself an accomplished oysterman until I become able to handle a sailing oyster smack whether loaded or empty. This I learned fast because I too was raised on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. And so days and months passed and I became an accomplished sailor and oysterman and somehow got used to that kind of life. I worked for Ivan eighteen monhts. For the first six months my pay was six dollars per month and the following year I got ten dollars per month.

About that time I met Capt. Ante Negodic, an old man of seventy-four who offered me a yearly salary of $ 120 if I would come work for him. I hated to leave Ivan and asked him if he would match Negodic’s offer. He replied that he did not have much work for the next few months and that Negodic was a good man. So, next day I packed my meager belongings and walked over to Negodic’s camp; about a quarter of a mile away. Negodic was an interesting old fisherman. He used to visit Stipe Zuvic who was seventy-five and Ante Rudolfic who was eighty-three and while they would narrate their youthful experiences I called them “the three wise men”. Space does not permit me to recount all they told me about the pioneer days of oyster industry. But I particularly remember the kind words of advice from Capt. Rudolfic, telling me that I came over too young, that this is hard work for anyone under twenty and so on. From them I learned that the Dalmatian Croatians pioneered oyster fishing and that at first they collected oysters along shallow waters a few at a time and primarily supplied up river plantations and sold oysters by the dozen or bucket-full, and as the number of oystermen increased they build large boats and took the oysters to New Orleans.

I worked for Negodic until 1915 when I went to work for Mato J. Bilic who had a camp in Bayou Cook and a camp in nearby Bayou Courant where the September 29, 1915 hurricane hit us. Besides me there was an olderly man Ivan Grcicand Grgo Slavic working for Capt. Bilic. In the morning of the day of the storm the tide was extremely low, about four feet below normal. The wind was blowing from North East. We took shelter from the wind and the rain in the camp while the oyster lugger Corsair was tied to the wharf in front of the camp. During mid-afternoon the wind turned and at about four o'clock we heard a loud deafening roar. We ran out to investigate, when to our horror we saw a huge wave, a wall of water, coming in our direction. We ran to the boat in which we rode out the storm. Our camp, and a few other camps in the Boyou Cook area were only slightly damaged but the wind and the water completely obliterated several other nearby camps and a large solidly-built clubhouse at the entrance of the Bastian Bay.

After the storm, at the invitation of my cousin Simo Slavic and Kristo Murina to come to work with them with the newly motorized boat Rogers, now renamed Petrograd, I left Bilic to work with them. By that time I had my fill of oars, sails, and pushing poles so a job on a motorized vessel was welcomed. I packed my belongings once again and moved on to the new job. When Petrograd was finally completely refurbished, we went to bed the oysters in Grand Lake near Bayou Quatro -about 25 miles west of Bayou Cook. At that time Petar V. and Petar A. Petrovic had their oyster-bedding grounds near us and we travelled together back and forth. After we stopped bedding the seed oysters we fished the full grown oysters in Sister Lake for an oyster canning factory in Bayou Delage.

In April 1916 we returned to our reefs to sell the cultivated oysters, which we had bed the previous fall, to the New Orleans market but found most of the oysters dead. The something hapenned the following year so we decided to move to the Four Bayou area where we had bed ten boat-loads of seed oysters. During the summer months we installed a shrimp trawl on the boat and went shrimping and fishing to pick up a few dollars as very few oysters were sold in the summer during the years before refrigeration and air conditioning were put to use.

In late October of 1918 when Simo Slavic, Petar V. and Petar A. Petrovic returned from New Orleans they brought a large supply of garlic and whiskey. When we inquired why such a large quantity of garlic, since we used garlic very sparingly to season our food, they explained that a sickness, an epidemic, was present in New Orleans and that people were dying like flies and that the physicians recommended that the people eat plenty of garlic and drink lots of whiskey. Simo was already sick and in bed on the boat with high fever. Next morning all four of us left for the city where we left Simo in a hospital and returned to the camp. But before we arrived at the camp I, too, got sick and went back to the city. I stayed at Porobil's boarding house four days before the doctors could find room for me in a hospital. No one expected me to live, but I never lost hope remembering that I pulled through worse jams than the Spanish Influenza which we called Spanjolica. Both Petar V. Petrovic and Petar A. Petrovic died but, thank God, Simo, Kristo and I recovered.

The seed oysters grew well in the Four Bayou area. It was possible to sell two or three times as much oysters as we had bed. The other Croatian oystermen heard about this area and moved their fishing operations. Among those that moved over were: Ivan Zegura, Ante F. Slavic, Ante Nikolac, Ivan Antunovic, Jakov Begovic, Vlaho Petrovic, John Vodopija, Juraj Vujnovic, and Luka Pausina with his three sons.

I fished oysters in Four Bayou in 1933 when I moved to New Orleans to become an oyster dealer. I bought a small house at 1234-36 Decatur Street, near the Oyster Landing on the Mississippi River and converted it into a shucking house and operated under the name of Oystermen Alliance. In 1938 1 sold the oyster business and entered into a partnership with the late Capt. Petar Talijancic to run freight on the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the mouth of the river. Capt. Talijancic owned the boat Victoria and I bought El Rito from Spicuzze Brothers and with the two boats we organized the El Rito Freight Service. Our pattern of work was the same as that of the first river-steamer freight boats. We would load the ordered supplies in New Orleans, start down river and stop at regular points such as Olga, Ostrica, Buras, Empire, etc and at any other place where we were signalled by a white flag on a pole, or at night by a waving lantern. The return trip was the same except that we loaded instead of unloaded. In 1940 our competitors: The New Orleans-Burrowood Packet Company constructed a large boat, the New Majestic, which became the last river packet boat to navigate the Mississippi from New Orleans to the mouth of the Mississippi. It was built by the Kovacevic Brothers shipyard in Biloxi, Mississippi. Shortly after, at the initiative of Marin Gerica, one of the stockholders of the company, in order to eliminate ruinous competition, the two companies merged into one single company, the Majestic-El Rito Freight Service.

The business improved and prospered during the war years as we transported every imaginable item for the United States Government. However, the river packet freight business was on a decline. After the war we lost the oyster freight business to faster and more economical trucks which met the oystermen's boats at Empire, Buras, and Port Sulphur. Also about this time expenses took a sharp increase and it was obvious to Gerica and me that it was a matter of few more years before we would have to give up. Besides, we were not getting any younger and the danger of the river increased as the sharpness of our eyesight decreased. However, our biggest enemy was not the cold and the unpredictable currents but the fog when our visibility became dangerously limited.

For the last few years due to the lack of trained personnel we operated the New Majestic with three men and four or five deckhands. After Pat Buras died, Marin and I ran the boat ourselves. The trip usually took from thirty-six to forty hours and during some trips we would not get to bed at all. Many times we were forced to stop, tie the boat, and grab two or three hours of sleep.

In the fall of 1959 Marin promised that we would retire when all his hair turned silvery gray which under the above described conditions was fast becoming a reality. One day in August 1960 1 stopped him and with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers pulled out his last black hair. And so Marin and I finally left the mighty Mississippi River and retired to a well deserved rest. My fifty years of work as an oyster fisherman, oyster dealer, and a river packet owner and captain came to an end. (Vujnovich 1977)