SLAVONIANS (CROATIANS) IN SAN FRANCISCO

Adam S. Eterovich

Alaska Herald August 15, 1869

The Slavonian race is well represented in the large percentage of foreigners who inhabit this city (1869). As a community, these people are clannish; they herd together, working solely for themselves, accumulating wealth and living it up; they have graduated social circles of their own and enjoy the pleasures of life in the fashion best adapted to the low level of their intellectual culture. They are an independent community. All its members are more or less civilized; that is to say they are not savages. The mercantile portion is principally engaged in the fruit trade; others devote their attention mainly to keeping restaurants, bar-rooms, coffee-houses, etc. All are prosperous. The secret of their prosperity is in their clannish habits.

The Slavonians in San Francisco are classed into three distinct societies. Some are Austrians (Dalmatians), others are Turks (Hercegovinians), the remainder Russians. They retain all their pristine instincts of jealousy, lust, vindictiveness and other animal passions. As before stated, their social culture is of a low grade and of necessity their moral instincts of jealousy of the superior acquirements of the new arrival, employed every trick suggested by his low cunning, and even used his wealth to assist him in his vile purpose, until finally he drove his better educated countrymen to the wall. This is literally true and many other similar instances might be readily mentioned. We will state on more and with it finish the subject.

Some of our readers may perhaps remember the particulars of a case which was on trial in one of or courts last April regarding a affray between two Slavonians (Croatians). The facts are briefly as follows: A Slavonian, who name has nothing to do with the subject, arrived here four years ago and engaged in trade as keeper of a coffee-house. This man was frugal, industrious and better educated than most his brethren here, and of course he became prosperous in his affairs. A dispute arose between him and another Slavonian, whose income for outstripped that of the former. Shortly after the quarrel, the two men met in the streets. The dispute was renewed and it ended in an encounter in which the coffee-house keeper was terribly beaten about the head with a heavy cane; his brutal antagonist holding in the other hand a pistol with which he threatened to shoot his victim in the event of offering resistance. The unfortunate man was rendered blind in one eye by the blows he received and left insensible to bleed to death on the street. The matter was carried before a civil court and the rich man, probably wielding the greatest influence, managed by some hocus-pocus to get off scot free! We understand that the injured man will sue the other in a heavy sum for the damages he sustained in the affray.

These are no isolated instances. True, our Slavonians are clannish, but it must not be forgotten that they are as of yet only half released from barbarism.