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)