eighteenth century tells us: "Indigo is of several Sorts. What we have gone mostly upon is the Sort generally cultivated in the Sugar Islands, which requires a high loose Soil, tolerably rich, and is our annual Plant, but the Nilco (i. e., wild) sort which is common in this Country is much more hardy and is perennial. The Stalk dies every year, but it shoots up again next Spring. The Indigo made from it is of as good quality as the other, and it will grow on very indifferent Land, provided it be dry and loose."
Experiments with indigo are noted as early as 1670. The earliest records of the colony contain allusions to "indico" as one of the sources of wealth. After a few years the making of indigo languished for a time. A London writer[1] of 1682 says: "Indigo they have made, and that good. The reason why they have desisted I can not learn." The industry was revived to some extent in Governor Thomas Smith's administration—the landgrave and wealthy planter who is said to have introduced the rice culture by planting in his garden at Charles-Town a bag of seed rice from Madagascar.
Edisto Island was early given to indigo culture, and the quality of its product became noted. The better soil for the production of indigo led many of the Huguenot immigrants to leave their first home at St. James on the Santee, and settle in St. Stephen's Parish. Yet these early efforts in indigo culture were not a marked success. We are told by an old writer that "all creatures about an indigo plantation are starved, whereas about a rice one, which abounds with provisions for man and beast, they thrive and flourish."
The honor of raising indigo-making to a profitable industry belongs to an enterprising young lady named Eliza Lucas. The story of her efforts is told in Ramsay's History of South Carolina,[2] George Lucas, the father of Eliza, was Governor of Antigua, in the West Indies, and also the owner of a plantation in South Carolina at Wappoo Cut.
In 1739 the daughter, who had become familiar with the crop and its methods in the West Indies, came to live in South Carolina. Her father often sent to her tropical seeds to be planted for her amusement on the plantation. The fact that a plant similar to the indigo of the West Indies grew spontaneously in the province suggested the adaptedness of the crop to this climate. Accordingly, some seed was sent, which Eliza planted in March,
- ↑ Quotation from A Compleat Discovery of the State of South Carolina, prepared by T. A., Gent, clerk in his Majestie's Ship Richmond, which was sent out in the year 1680 to inquire into the State of that Country by his Majestie's Special Command. To be sold by Mrs. Grover in Pelican Court, Little Britain, 1682.
- ↑ See Ramsay's History, vol. ii, p. 138, etc.
