Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 52)

exploring the idea. The influential New Orleans-based DeBow’s Review, in an 1866 article entitled “Coolies as a Substitute for Negroes,” reported that sugar harvests by South Asians were “much more than in the years of slavery,” illustrating “the advantages of the coolie system, [which] has raised [these colonies] from almost entirely ruined to highly flourishing dependencies.” First Arrivals, 1866-1867 In 1866, a few laborers from the Philippine Islands were brought to Louisiana by one T. Edmonston. The next year, Jules H. Normand brought 15 Chinese laborers from Havana and Matanzas, with names such as Francisco, Migel, Castro, and Seraphine, through New Orleans and delivered them to two cotton growers in Natchitoches Parish. He and planter Benjamin W. Bullitt brought approximately 55 more Chinese to New Orleans by March 1867, destined for Louisiana cotton and sugar plantations. The two agents started a company in New Orleans to recruit more Chinese-Cuban laborers. “Most of the Chinese cling to their native dishes, even when they discard Oriental costume. Rice is their staple food but fish, birds, and other delicacies are imported from China. They drink tea as Americans do water.” - Daily Picayune, 1910 In competition was Edward T. Wyches, who, using a fillin-the-blank contract form printed in Spanish and English, imported 50 Chinese to the Bayou Lafourche region in 1867. There, a journalist witnessed a remarkable Louisiana ethnic amalgamation: in the heart of French Acadiana, a Spanishspeaking Creole oversaw Spanish-speaking Chinese laborers brought to Cuba from the Portuguese colony of Macao and thence to the United States to replace recently emancipated slaves originally kidnapped from Africa. That summer, Harper’s Weekly reported that 2,000 “coolies…whose terms of service have expired in Cuba, are to be introduced into Louisiana, and it is a matter to which public attention should be intelligently directed.” Attention came from the federal government, which contemplated intervening. More decisively, a war in Cuba in 1868 cut off the flow of workers from the colony. The Caribbean Chinese importations ended, but not the idea of Chinese labor in Louisiana. Planters now looked to the Pacific Rim. Second Wave, 1869-1871 Tepid interest in Chinese labor resurfaced in 1869, when voices supporting the idea slightly outnumbered those disdaining the importation of “foreign heathens.” Planters formed the Mississippi Valley Immigration Labor Company and, rather than Cuba, targeted California and China for recruitment efforts. One agent, George W. Gift of Arkansas, navigated legal gray zones in British colonial Hong Kong and persuaded 189 Chinese to board the Ville de St. Lo to New Orleans, arriving June 1, 1870. Another 222 Chinese followed four months later. Asian faces became an increasingly familiar sight in sugar-parish towns such as Donaldsonville, where Chinese sugar workers would congregate on Lafourche Street — “the precincts of ‘China Town,’” according to a local newspaper. Many Louisianians, both white and black, encountered Asian peoples for the first time, exposing cultural differences and prejudices. Bad pay and treatment led many Chinese laborers to job-hop for better opportunities throughout the region. In 1869-1870, another 1,200 Chinese arrived to work on railroads, plantations, and cotton mills, of whom 141 ended up on the Millaudon/Merrill sugar plantation in Jefferson Parish. Only 25 remained in 1872, the rest having departed for various reasons of dissatisfaction. Chinese recruitment faced numerous obstacles. The U.S. government viewed it as a dangerously close substitute for slavery and eyed it disapprovingly. New legal restrictions on importations from Hong Kong and better pay in California made hard labor in the South a tough sell. Planters themselves were displeased to discover that the 52 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Fall 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

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