The plant itself is pretty: a shrub with frond-like branches, seedpods curved like tiny smiles, and delicate, coral-pink flowers. But indigo did not surrender blue without a fight. Slaves had to plant it, weed it, and coax it through cold spells in spring. When the summer swelter thrummed with insects, slaves would pick pests from the indigo leaves. When the shrub grew tall and bushy and heavy with with sap, the slaves would hack it down and lug it on their backs, heave it into giant vats, pound it to pulp, cover it with water, and weigh it down with stones to make it rot. Putrefaction was not pretty. Neighbors complained of the stench. The odor of rot was so great it could nauseate slaves as they beat at the mixture with large, wooden paddles, feeding air to the sludge. And the dye itself, dried and packed and sold in cakes or sock-like canvass bags, was useless until it was ground to a powder and doused with urine. Stirred into water, it slouched into a splotchy, pea-green soup with a yellow-green fluorescent sheen. But when the dye master dipped into this soup a swath of fabric, and raised it to the air, the sopping cloth began to blush a living blue. Oxygen was the final ingredient, the kiss that brought color to life. indigo binds externally to the cloths threads, coaxed by a chemical agent called a mordant. The root mor- almost always means death in some capacity. In this case it actually translates to to bite, meaning it helps natural indigo dye bite onto the fabric. The toxicity of the plant could cause Diarrhea or Anorexia. Imagine..to be an Irish Slave (Because slave owners would never subject their more expensive African slaves to possible hazards that might cause them to die..) working in the hot sun, sick with dysentery and vomiting, the smell of rotting indigo fills your lungs and youre standing in this putrid mess beating it. deemallon.wordpress/2014/09/04/just-todays-thoughts-about-indigo-and-slavery-and-being-an-american/ clemson.edu/glimpse/?p=3313 plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_baau.pdf
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 20:25:57 +0000
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