ORLANDO, Fla. – When you think of the many products and features that makes Florida unique, do you think of a color that falls somewhere between blue and violet?
Well, indigo – one of the oldest vegetable dyes known – that was widely used in ancient India, Egypt and Peru was also one of the main exports of the British controlled Florida.
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For reference, the British controlled Florida from 1763-1784.
Indigofera tinctoria and Indigofera suffruticosa are not native to Florida. They may be native to China, tropical Asia and parts of Africa, according to the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, or UF/IFAS.
With that said, the Atlas of Florida Plants shows that true indigo has been found growing wild in Miami-Dade, Monroe and Hillsborough Counties.
According to historians at the University of North Florida, indigo was an important crop in other southern states, as well, but Florida’s weather allowed “overseers to direct three cuttings of the weed” compared to only two at plantations in Georgia and South Carolina.
It should be pointed out that indigo was harvested on plantations that were powered by slave labor much like rice, sugar and sugar cane at the time.
In a peer reviewed article titled “Indigo from Indigofera spp.: Historical and Cultural Overview” on the UF/IFAS, it noted that “In Florida, indigo was an important crop during the late colonial period when the British controlled the area since it was the major export crop in the 1760s and 1770s.”
The importance of indigo in Florida is even memorialized by a marker at the Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park in Flagler County with the following inscription:
“Vats and drying racks were used for the production of indigo. The vats were large, holding up to two thousand gallons of liquid. The stems and leaves were cut and laid in the larger vat. The stems were covered with a urine and water mix and left to soak. The liquid darkened to a gold or olive color. After eight to twelve hours the liquid was drained into a lower vat and limewater was added and the liquid was violently beaten. This added air to the fluid turning it blue. The indigo settled to the bottom of the vat as a sludge. After a few days the clear water was drawn and the residue of indigo was scooped into linen bags and hung to dry. After it reached a pasty consistency it was spread out on boards to dry and harden. Finally it was cut into small blocks for shipping.”
Marker in Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park
In a scholarly article titled “Plant of the Month: Indigo” by Suryatapa Jha, PhD, the author breaks down some of the history of this important crop.
“The profits from indigo quickly outnumbered those of sugar and cotton, and indigo became one of the fastest-growing components of the Atlantic economy, with its total European imports from America increasing six-fold from the mid-1720s toward the end of the century,” she wrote in part.
Making the dye from indigo is a multi-step process. It involves the fermentation of the leaves, adding calcium hydroxide to alkalize the solution and vigorous mixing of the solution to add oxygen and make the blue pigment settle out of the solution. The solid material is then dried and ground to use as a powdered dye.
British Controlled Florida was divided into two colonies separated by the Apalachicola River. St. Augustine was the capital of East Florida while Pensacola was the capital of West Florida.
In 1784, Britain returned Florida to Spain – and they wanted in on the indigo rush. In 1793, Governor Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada wrote of the fine quality of Florida indigo suitable for export.
Luis Fatio, a prominent planter near St. Augustine wrote the following about indigo:
In an article of The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association titled “Indigo in Colonial Louisiana and the Floridas,” it was noted that indigo was a major product of West Florida.
“Colonel Augustine Prevost, commander at Pensacola, predicted great things for the indigo production, and between 1763 and 1772 experiments in growing and processing led to an excellent quality of indigo,” the article states.
I recently sat down with Phillip Eschbach III whose family dates back to the early days on Florida, before it was a state and even before the British period.
Eschbach wrote a book based off of years of research of his family titled “Pioneers of Florida, The Story of the Williams Family.” It’s a fascinating story that I will detail at a later time.
In the book, he notes that during this British Period, a doctor from Scotland named Andrew Turnbull and his partners obtained land grants from the king to totaling about 100,000 acres. Turnbull named the area Smyrna after his wife’s hometown in Turkey which is now known as Izmir.
The men intended on growing indigo as their cash crop in the area they named New Smyrna in what is now in Volusia County, but by 1777, the idea was a failure. Disease, Indians and other factors caused 500 immigrants brought in to help run the operation abandoned the area for St. Augustine.
Today, you can see some of the ruins of that failed plan at Old Fort Park in New Smyrna Beach.
In 1784, Britain returned Florida to Spain – and they wanted in on the indigo rush. In 1793, Governor Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada wrote of the fine quality of Florida indigo suitable for export.
“Indigo is an indigenous plant in that country, and grows well everywhere without cultivation, and in the time of the English there were many inhabitants who devoted themselves to this and made indigo as good as that of Guatemala and sold it in London at the same price. In order to foment this branch of commerce, now ruined, it will be necessary to give the inhabitants information concerning its consumption in our dominions, and, if there is not consumption enough, to send it where it is.”
Luis Fatio
By 1796, indigo cultivation in the southeast waned as other crops took its place and England turned to plantations in India and the East Indies for dye.
The end of the 19th century saw the invention of synthetic indigo, which is now mostly used for the indigo color in clothing we use today.
However, in 2021, the UF/IFAS posted their results in an indigo field trial “designed to test the viability of growing the indigo plant that produces the iconic natural blue dye used in denim and other products.”
Their research was driven by new consumer and manufacturer demand for natural dyes.
The two-year trial tested the viability of growing ancient indigo in South Florida.
The cycle of indigo production is short, which makes it more cost-effective for farmers,” he said. “Indigo doesn’t require a lot of water or fertilizer, as opposed to other crops that need large inputs in terms of constant irrigation and fertilizer. It’s a win-win,” Wagner Vendrame, a UF professor and assistant department chair of environmental horticulture, said.
The cultivation of indigo may provide growers and farmers with an alternative way to avoid using synthetic dyes which are non-renewable and “are typically made from toxic or carcinogenic input chemistries such as aniline.”
Everything old is new again.
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