The Pearl Rush of Caddo Lake

Caddo Lake. Photo: Maciej Kraus/Flickr Natural pearls are a rarity today, but a hundred years ago, before British biologist William Saville-Kent first developed the technique of pearl culturing, natural pearls were found in many parts of the world and it was the only kind of pearl people wore. For thousand of years, divers retrieved natural pearls from wild oysters in the Indian Ocean in areas such as the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Mannar. The pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf, in particular, were the most famous and valuable in the world. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), the Chinese hunted extensively for seawater pearls in the South China Sea. When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Western Hemisphere, they discovered that around the islands of Cubagua and Margarita, some 200 km north of the Venezuelan coast, was an extensive pearl bed. Pearls harvested from these beds were gifted by Philip II of Spain to his wife Mary I of England. In the Americas, Native Americans harvested freshwater pearls from lakes and rivers in Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Marine pearls were found in the Caribbean and waters along the coasts of Central and South America. During colonial times, slaves were employed as pearl divers off the northern coasts of modern Colombia and Venezuela. The waters being searched were known to be shark-infested, and many unlucky slaves lost their lives to shark attacks. But those fortunate to discover a great pearl could sometimes purchase his freedom. In 1905, Sachihiko Ono Murata, a Japanese immigrant, who once served as chef aboard a U.S. Navy ship in the Pacific fleet, settled on the north shore of Caddo Lake—a large dragon-shaped lake on the border between Texas and Louisiana. Caddo Lake is famous for its cypress forest, which is one of the largest in the United States.