Hilton Head’s indigo roots rising again at Gullah Museum

Indigo growing wild across Hilton Head Island is a reminder of a forgotten past for Louise Miller Cohen, founder and director of the Gullah Museum of Hilton Head.

“Our people were brought here for three reasons — rice, cotton and indigo” Cohen said. “I want to know more about indigo.”

Cohen planted her first indigo seeds at the Gullah Museum this spring in hopes they would blossom into an educational opportunity for the region.

In recent weeks, some of those plants are doing just that.

The indigo project started with Catherine Cross, founder of the Arts and Agriculture Project. Cross, an artist who is running the program throughout the southeast. It mixes art with education about small rural farming.

“Indigo production stopped after the Revolutionary War,” Cross said. “ We are seeing a resurgent of growing the plant in recent years.” The plant was used to make blue dye.

For Cohen, learning about indigo is a spiritual and historical experience. She said the plant has always drawn her.

“I remember playing in indigo plants as a child,” Cohen said. “If you kneel on it, your knees would be stained green and the more you rubbed, the greener they would get.”

Remnants of South Carolina’s indigo past were subtle but present growing up, Cohen said. For example, her grandmother never called the plant “indigo” but used a word, likely from the Geechee language, to describe it. The word sounds close to “poly-potion,” but Cohen said she does not know the spelling.

Some slaves would have been brought to South Carolina for their knowledge of growing indigo in their West Africa homelands, Cross said. She said once here, they continued the often grueling work of growing and fermenting the plant.

“They had to use urine to process the plant,” Cross said. “ A lot of people were getting sick.”

Margaret F. Pickett, a Hilton Head resident and author of the book “Eliza Lucas Pinckney,” said it is hard to fully understand slaves’ involvement in the indigo process because of a lack of records.

Pinckney is known as the first mass producer of the indigo crop in South Carolina and the region. As she capitalized on a market niche, the industry spread throughout the southeast between from the 1740s and to the 1790s, Pickett said.

Records show it’s likely even Hilton Head Island was growing indigo.

“The sea islands could grow indigo,” Pickett said. “The saltwater made growing other cash crops, such as rice, difficult. We know indigo was produced on Hilton Head because of equipment inventory records.”

Growing the plant again on Hilton Head is exactly what Cohen is attempting to do. Yet, drought conditions in the area this summer haven’t made it easy.

Cohen isn’t giving up.

Cohen recently pondered why her culture ever lost the knowledge of dyeing with indigo while sitting next to an indigo sprig she recently picked.

“I don’t know,” Cohen said. “People will hold onto what they can manage.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 2:42 PM with the headline "Hilton Head’s indigo roots rising again at Gullah Museum."