Eliza Lucas Pinckney: Pioneer of Indigo Cultivation?

Beatrix Hoffmann-Ihde
BCDSS Exhibition Curator

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) is considered a pioneer of agricultural development in South Carolina/USA and was thus the first woman to be inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1989 (fig. 1). She is credited with being instrumental in driving forward the cultivation of indigo and its processing into a dye in the middle of the 18th century. By exporting indigo to the United Kingdom, South Carolina freed itself economically from its strong dependence on rice production. However, the one-sided focus on the female pioneer completely masks the asymmetrical dependency relationships and the people involved in them. It was the work and knowledge of the enslaved people on the plantations that made successful indigo production possible.

Fig. 1: The memory of the Pinckney family can be found in many places in South Carolina and includes recognition of the achievements of Eliza Lukas Pinckney: Street sign and hotel advertisement in Downtown Charleston (photo: B. Ihde, 2025).

Experiments in Indigo Cultivation

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) (fig. 2) managed the plantations belonging to her father, George Lucas, in South Carolina from 1739. Shortly after moving to the young colony with his family from Antigua, George Lucas was called back to the Caribbean island.

His sixteen-year-old daughter not only took over the running of her father’s three plantations but also began, at his suggestion or request, to experiment with cultivating various species of plants, such as cassava, ginger, alfalfa, cotton, and also indigo (cf. letter dated July 1740 in Pinckney et al. 1997: 8). In the 1730s, such experiments were widespread among the settlers and plantation owners of South Carolina. They were motivated by the desire and need to free themselves from the one-sided dependency on rice cultivation by expanding the range of crops grown.

Fig. 2: Information panel at the Snee Farm near Charleston, South Carolina, which was once owned by the Pinckney family and where indigo was grown The picture in the upper right corner is reminiscent of Eliza Pinckney (photo: B. Ihde, 2025; editing A. Schüßler).

Beginning of indigo cultivation in South Carolina

Experiments into cultivating indigo had been conducted in South Carolina since the beginning of European colonization. The experiments initially focused on the native indigo species, Indigofera caroliniana. However, the results were not satisfactory. The dye obtained from this was too weak and could not compete with the intensity of color produced by other species, such as Indigofera tinctoria and Indigofera sufruticosa. The native species was thus unsuitable for export purposes and was only cultivated for personal use, if at all (cf. Butler 2019: 4). Further experiments concentrated on the two species Indigofera tinctoria and Indigofera sufruticosa, which originally come from South Asia/India and Central America/Guatemala. Their seeds came to the region with the first settlers. Soon after the colony was founded, however, interest in the indigo experiments decreased sharply, as rice had proven to be the highest-yielding field crop at the end of the 17th century.

Nevertheless, experiments in cultivating indigo were never abandoned completely. The findings from these were passed on in personal exchanges and publications. Robert Stevens (died around 1720), for instance, published a description of obtaining the dye from the indigo plant (cf. Butler 2019: 5, FN1) in the South Carolina Gazette in 1706. This local knowledge about cultivating and processing indigo was also frequently combined with knowledge from immigrants. The Huguenots may have played a role in this (cf. Butler 2019: 5). The French religious refugees were not only welcome in many European states as knowledgeable textile producers, such as of silk and knitted goods. They were also able to use their knowledge to drive forward indigo production in South Carolina. However, enslaved people, who were transported to South Carolina from indigo-producing regions of Africa or from other European colonial regions in which indigo was cultivated, also brought their knowledge with them and passed it on to the plantation owners (cf. Feeser 2024).

Indigo Experiments led by Eliza Lucas Pinckney

Eliza thus built her experiments on an existing knowledge base and combined this with her own experience in plant cultivation. She had obtained this as a child on her parents’ sugar plantation and likely expanded it during her schooling in England. Her father supported his daughter’s plant experiments by providing seeds and engaging in written exchanges about successes and setbacks. However, Eliza Lucas Pinckney also conducted an exchange of this kind with her neighbors, such as Huguenot Andrew Deveaux (Ravenel 1896: 104f; cf. Butler 2019: 8). He was very experienced in plant cultivation and gave the young woman advice on her experiments (Pinckney et al. 1997: xix). Deveaux, too, experimented with cultivating indigo. An advertisement in the South Carolina Gazette of 1745 indicates that he also successfully cultivated indigo, as he combined the offer of seeds for sale with the offer to pass on his knowledge of indigo cultivation to potential buyers free of charge (Pinckney et al. 1997: xix FN13).

Eliza Lucas Pinckney lived with her mother and sister as well as many enslaved people on a plantation at Wappoo Creek, near the capital Charleston. There, she managed and supervised the experiments on the cultivation of indigo. At Green Hill Plantation, these were subsequently placed under the care of the manager there. Young Eliza appears to have experimented with the two most important indigo species (cf. Pinckney et al. 1997: xviii). In 1741, she asked her father for seeds of the “West Indian indigo” (Pinckney et al. 1997: 16), although she also used locally available seeds at the same time (Pinckney et al. 1997: xviii) (fig. 3.). She thus likely had access to the two most important indigo varieties, Indigofera tinctoria and Indigofera sufruticosa (fig. 4a + 4b). Indigofera sufruticosa, which is native to Guatemala and is climatically more resilient, was then grown in South Carolina mainly to export indigo dye.

Fig. 3: Indigo seeds (photo: B. Ihde, 2025)

Fig. 4a: Flowering Indigofera tinctoria (photo: Pancrat, 2014, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indigofera_tinctoria_jd_plt_Paris.jpg.

Fig. 4b: Indigofera sufruticosa (right), also called ‘Anil’ or ‘Wild Indigo’. Colored copperplate engraving from Johann Friedrich Bertuch’s picture book for children, Weimar 1792. (Florilegius / Alamy stock photo).

Whose Success?

As early as 1741, George Lucas sent his daughter an expert to take over obtaining the dye and share his knowledge about it (Pinckney et al. 1997: xvii). However, Nicholas Cromwell, from the island of Montserrat, did not meet the expectations. As his first attempt failed and the dye was unusable due to excess lime (Ravenel 1896: 105; Pinckney et al. 1997: xvii), Eliza accused him of sabotaging her so as not to jeopardize indigo production in Montserrat. However, it is possible that Cromwell was not sufficiently familiar with the natural characteristics of South Carolina. He had brick vats built in which to soak and ferment the indigo leaves. It is conceivable that the excess lime came from the materials used to build these vats. This is because there is barely enough clay to produce bricks in the lowlands of South Carolina. Instead, tabby, a type of concrete, was used whenever durable structures were to be built. In addition to sand, water, and ash, this concrete primarily consisted of a mixture of natural oyster shells and oyster shells burnt to lime. It is possible that an unwanted reaction occurred between the fermented indigo leaves and the lime contained in the tabby. George Lucas thus wrote to his daughter that wooden vats would be better-suited for soaking and fermenting the indigo leaves (cf. Ravenel 1896: 105).

As a result of his failure, Nicholas Cromwell was replaced by his brother. His brother was obviously more successful, as it was possible to send an indigo sample to London for testing in 1744. There, it was compared with the best indigo from French production and was found to be equally good (Pinckney et al. 1997: xviii). This encouraged many plantation owners to continue cultivating indigo. Eliza, now married to Pinckney, encouraged this willingness by giving the majority of her harvested seeds to other plantation owners.

A few years later, South Carolina was already exporting so much indigo dye to the United Kingdom that the British parliament decided to subsidize indigo production in the North American colony. This led to a rapid increase in indigo production in South Carolina, enabling South Carolina to achieve the economic independence from rice production that it had been seeking in the second half of the 18th century. The United Kingdom, however, secured almost all of South Carolina’s indigo production with its subsidy pledge and was thus able to free itself from its dependence on expensive French imports. The profits from indigo production made South Carolina the richest colony in North America and the Pinckney family, into which Eliza had married, one of the richest and most respected families there (fig. 5 + 6).

Fig. 5: The 1735 built Hampton Plantation House/South Carolina (photo: B. Ihde, 2024).

Fig. 6: View on the Wappoo Creek (photo: B. Ihde, 2025).

The True Heroes of the Story

However, how much of the success credited to her was really due to Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s involvement? Eliza’s single-mindedness, curiosity, and also systematic approach to the experiments certainly made an important contribution, along with her great confidence in making indigo cultivation on the plantations of South Carolina an economic success – to the economic benefit of the colony and the United Kingdom. However, this would not have been possible for her without the work of the enslaved people on her father’s plantations, who not only had African roots but also came from local indigenous communities. They ultimately made the project a success story. As enslaved people, bound in asymmetrical dependency relationships, they carried out the exhausting, dirty, and also unpleasant work: indigo cultivation, from preparing the fields and sowing the seeds, tending and harvesting the plants, to obtaining seeds and the dye. The production of the dye was particularly unpleasant and required hard work, which had to be carried out immediately after the leaves were harvested under time pressure. With few exceptions, such as the enslaved “mulatto” Quash/John Williams, the many people who were instrumental in the success of the undertaking are still hidden in the darkness of untold stories. Quash/John Williams, who worked on Wappoo Plantation as a carpenter, built a large number of wooden vats to obtain the dye in the second, successful, run of experiments (Feeser 2024: 8). All of these people have not, however, been completely forgotten. Indigo, the plant and the blue dye of the same name, are today part of the cultural heritage of the Gullah Geechee community. They are the descendants of the people transported from Africa and enslaved and still live along the Atlantic coast between North Carolina and Florida today. Their most important centers lie in South Carolina and Georgia. This heritage lives on in the stories, myths, and religious practices of the Gullah Geechee as well as in their works of art.

The history of indigo cultivation is also linked to the land and the soil on which the indigo plants grew. It is the land of the First Nations, from which they were evicted by European settlers, often by force and sometimes in unequal exchange for a few blue-dyed cotton dresses (cf. Feeser 2013). The name of the plantation on which Eliza Lucas Pinckney began her indigo experiments – Wappoo – is a further reminder of the original inhabitants of this land.