Le Bleu Perdu

The history, and burgeoning revival, of indigo cultivation and dyeing in Louisiana

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In a legend that has been passed down within the Canneci Tinné Apache Tribe (formerly known as the Coco Tribe of Canneci Tinné), a coyote steals a white dress, only to find himself dragging it through a series of mishaps into salty, ashy water. When he emerges, though, he discovers that the dress is a brilliant blue. 

The Canneci word for “blue” is tatxe. On the tribe’s medicine wheel, tatxe represents the South. This holds significance for the Canneci, who are the easternmost descendants of the Lipan Apache Nation—residing since the early eighteenth century in the South, in the Prairie Marronne and Bayou Tortue areas around St. Martin and Lafayette Parishes.

“Blue for us is a southern color,” said Nant’a (Chief) Kugr Goodbear. “And it represents water”—which the Canneci historically relied upon in South Louisiana as a source of nourishment and transportation. To this day, tatxe is worn on traditional garments as an homage to the region the tribe calls home. 

The Canneci is not the only native tribe in the surrounding region to incorporate the color blue into its textiles—the Tunica-Biloxi and the Choctaw both also hold the color as part of their traditions. Before the rise of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century, blues would have had to be sourced from plants—most commonly: indigo. 

And before the Europeans arrived with their ships loaded down with Indigofera tinctoria seeds from Asia, ready to tear open Louisiana’s prairies to make room for plantations, Indigenous people had developed traditions and processes using native “false” or “wild” indigos (of the genus Baptisia) as well as one species of "true" indigo, Indigofera suffruiticosa. 

This knowledge, combined with that of African artisans forcibly brought here from across the world, would ultimately be exploited by the European planters, who would build fortunes on their backs. 

Indigo has its place in Cajun history, too. When the Acadians arrived in this strange new land, they brought with them skills in textile-making. Here, instead of wool, they had cotton. And unlike wool, cotton didn’t absorb the colors of most plant-based dyes without a mordant. The only dye they could get to stick was blue, from indigo. For this reason, most traditional Cajun textiles held only three colors—brown, from coton jaune; white, from cotton; and blue, from indigo. 

[Read this: Looming Solastalgia—How the revival of coton jaune is helping us to remember]

In most accountings of Louisiana history, indigo is relegated to a brief chapter in the legacy of the plantation era, which ultimately yielded to the more notorious cotton and sugarcane industries. But the plant, and its distinctive blue, grows at the intersection of this region’s ecological history, its Indigenous history, colonial history, and the history of the African diaspora via the transatlantic slave trade. It grew, wild and plentiful, in the unplowed, unpoisoned prairies; colored the textiles and stained the hands of the people who lived here long before Europe discovered the Americas. The global desire for blue is the very thing that launched Louisiana’s plantations; the work of processing it created the demand for free labor, and the lore of the skilled dye masters in West Africa was part of what brought the slave traders to those shores. 

Today, growing concerns about the health and ecological effects of synthetics have spurred a renewed appreciation for nontoxic plant-based dyes across the globe, with indigo once again at the forefront. This revival—undertaken by artisans, farmers, and designers—sparked in the Carolinas, where the indigo industry was most prominent in North America. But over the course of the last year, a collective interest in the plant, and its dye, has also taken hold closer to home in Acadiana, where scientists, artists, and historians are recalling Louisiana’s particular relationship with le bleu perdu.  

From Seed to Stain

It all started with a collaboration between LSU biologist Benjamin Dubansky, Ph.D. and curators at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, who were putting together the exhibition Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo, currently on display through March 16, 2025. The show is part of PST ART, a Getty initiative that facilitates program activations at museums and institutions across California exploring, this year, the intersections of art and science. For their expertise in integrating the two disciplines, the National Academies of Sciences invited Dubansky and longtime collaborator Brandon Ballengée, Ph.D., an artist and biologist working out of Arnaudville, to act as consultants on PST 2024. 

Fascinated by the prospect of the Mingei’s exhibition, Dubansky set out to bring indigo into his lab at LSU, where he and his wife Brooke Dubansky, Ph.D.—an award winning histologist—researched eighteenth century procedures used to dye cells for visualization under microscopes. Before it was replaced by cheaper synthetic alternatives, indigo was one of the most popular dyes used as a stain. Though this process was practiced for about a century, the stains themselves—preceding the advent of color photography—have been lost to history. 

Together, the Dubanskys wanted to replicate the process, from dye extraction to tissue staining, and create high resolution photographs of the resulting microscopic slides to contribute to Blue Gold. 

Dubansky saw an opportunity to draw in an ecological and cultural layer to his project and reached out to Ballengée who, for the past six years, has been renaturing Cajun prairie habitat with his wife Aurore at their nature reserve in Arnaudville, Atelier de la Nature. The Dubanksys would recreate lost technology of indigo; the Ballengées would reclaim the lost landscape. In the springs of 2023 and 2024, the Ballengées hosted public prairie plantings at the Atelier—planting native wild indigo (Baptisia) seeds, as well as native “Guatemalan” indigo (I. suffruticosa), along with a host of other native plants. Together, the scientists harvested the leaves, extracted the dye, and the Dubanskys used these Louisiana indigos (supplemented by some purchased natural indigo—"The yield is very very low, and the process is labor intensive. This is why the industry required slave labor," said Ben) to create their slides. 

But then, they found themselves pushing further, consulting local experts in fields ranging from textile arts to colonial history. “It’s so multidimensional,” said Aurore.  

“The more we dug, the more this plant just seemed so important to the history of this place, from a biodiversity standpoint, from the Indigenous standpoint, from the cultural standpoint,” said Brandon. “And then, it’s just so aesthetically fascinating. The chemical reaction that occurs in front of your eyes, this transformation from when it oxidizes and starts to turn that blue. It’s really incredible.” 

[Read this: Growing by the Railway Side—Resurrecting the Cajun Prairie]

The History of Indigo in Louisiana

The use of the indigo plant for dyeing is a phenomenon that occured in ancient societies all across the world, most of whom had no contact with each other. Historically, where indigo plants were available, humans unveiled its potential for blue. “It’s interesting, because it’s a complicated technique to turn a plant that looks green into a blue dye,” said Sarah Franzen, Ph.D., an assistant professor of geography and anthropology at LSU, who has a specialty in African American agricultural systems. “The process emerged in multiple different points around the globe, within multiple different cultures, with different species of the plant, and even different genuses of the plant.” 

Records of indigo’s use in Louisiana prior to the colonial era are sparse, but there is plenty of evidence that native species of Baptisia and Indigofera suffruticosa were being used by Indigenous people as a dye in the Americas—especially Central and South America. Because certain native tribes here in Louisiana were known to incorporate the color blue into their traditions and garments, it can be deduced that indigo, the most potent of plant-based dyes, was used. 

Colonial records do reveal that Indigenous people in the Gulf region used these plants for medicine. Other records suggest that, once the indigo plantations were in operation, certain Native peoples were specifically selected for enslavement, likely for their knowledge of the plant and how to process it. 

European reliance on the knowledge of Indigenous populations to grow and process indigo dye was a key factor across the global colonial scheme. In Louisiana in the early 1700s, the French were ready to compete with the English and Spanish indigo plantations in the Americas; by 1719, they were actively sourcing seeds and enslaved labor from the Senegambia region of West Africa, which had a long history of growing indigo and producing valuable textiles with it. “There is strong evidence, from colonial letters, that colonizers were specifically asking to find enslaved persons from the Senegambia area because of their expertise,” said Franzen.  

In a book published this past January by Imani Perry called Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, Perry imagines the colossal shift in meaning that would have occurred for the indigo artisans forcibly taken to the New World, “You might eye a fine indigo wrapper, so fine intended for a king, deep blue—and you experience an uncanny moment: you too are now a thing, not an agent but material for the use of rulers. Prisoner of war or prisoner of whites, or both—your counted value is now equivalent to what you once mastered.” 

“For enslaved persons who ended up in Louisiana, indigo would have had that mixed meaning,” said Franzen. “It was used throughout West Africa culturally, as part of their heritage. But in Louisiana, it was created under the destructive plantation system.” 

[Read more about Brandon Ballengée's work as a biologist and artist: "Integrating art and biology, Brandon Ballengée centers loss in the age of the Anthropocene"]

Louisiana’s climate and soil had already proven itself suitable for the growth of Indigofera suffruticosa, though the Europeans’ trade relationships with Asian markets motivated them to instead buy and plant the Asian species Indigo tinctoria. Indigo plantations rose up in Louisiana along the Mississippi—among them Whitney and Destrehan. 

Throughout much of the eighteenth century, the colonial indigo industry was prosperous in Louisiana. The work was laborious and dangerous, and required more and more enslaved workers as the plantations grew. “Indigo helped to incentivize slavery,” said Charles Ray Brassieur, Ph.D., a professor of anthropology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “If they were going to do this, they needed more slaves. When they had enough slaves, that helped them believe that they could now grow cotton. And sugarcane.” 

These other commodities became more attractive to Louisiana planters as the indigo industry suffered from war and tariffs; not to mention plagues and the toll commercial-scale indigo extraction took on the environment and the people who processed it. Enslaved people suffered health problems due to the fumes. Waste from the processing was often drained into nearby waterways, polluting drinking water and poisoning livestock. 

By the late eighteenth century, cotton was reigning king in Louisiana. Within a century, the entire global trade of natural indigo was supplanted by the discovery of synthetic indigo dye, which could be mass produced at a far lesser cost. The commercial incentives to cultivate indigo diminished, and eventually, so did the knowledge of how to use it.

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The Lost Art, Science, and Culture of Indigo in Louisiana

Although indigo’s role in Louisiana’s history has been frequently reduced to a footnote, its traces remain: in Indigenous folktales, in the presence of African American families whose ancestors were brought here for their knowledge of the “blue gold,” and in the patches of Indigofera tinctoria growing across the region—descendants of an industry that once held the world in its grip. 

The modern-day revival, according to Franzen and Brassieur, represents an interesting counter-movement to the plant’s colonial legacy. In opposition of the dye’s history as an ecological hazard, these indigo operations are frequently exercises in ecological stewardship and sustainability. “It’s interesting because the same plant can produce very different outcomes, depending on the sort of intention and processes and goals behind it,” said Franzen. “Companies are using nitrogen-fixing species, and processes that minimize toxicity”—ultimately causing far less harm than their synthetic counterparts and producing high-quality artisanal products that challenge the fast-fashion landscape. 

The revivals also join a national wave of reckoning with the destruction inflicted by colonialism and enslavement. Within these reckonings are invitations for Indigenous and African diasporic peoples to both mourn the suffering of their ancestors under the plantation system built around indigo and reclaim a tradition that their ancestors had mastered. 

Hoping to facilitate multi-disciplinary interest and explorations on indigo in Louisiana, and to source existing local knowledge, last spring the Ballengées hosted a two-day gathering at the Atelier centered on “The Lost Art, Science, and Culture of Indigo” in Louisiana. 

At the well-attended event, the Dubanskys presented a demonstration of their histological staining process. Brassieur and Franzen gave talks on the history and socio-cultural dimensions of indigo in Louisiana. Participants planted seeds and learned how to nurture their growth as part of biodiverse Louisiana prairie ecosystems. And Sandra Sarr, a local writer, read an original poem titled “The Road to Indigo.” 

The climax of the weekend was a dyeing demonstration. Two local textile artists, Ellie Barker and Suzanne Chaillot Breaux, walked visitors through their process of extracting dye—using Baptisia from nearby prairies in one vat, Indigofera suffruticosa from the New Orleans Botanical Garden in another, and Indigofera tinctoria from Louisiana State University’s campus in another. 

Into the native Indigo suffruticosa, LouAnn Moses, an artisan of the Canneci Tinné Apache Tribe, dipped a traditional “camp dress,” transforming the muslin into a rich, beautiful blue—just as her ancestors would have. According to Goodbear, Moses is the last tribal citizen with knowledge on how to sew ceremonial Canneci garments, which she has been dyeing using synthetic dyes. 

“The symposium was like a reintroduction of indigo to our tribe,” said Goodbear. Since the event, the tribe has been working on securing a space to grow native indigo to use regularly for their ceremonial clothing. “So, when we go to Pow Wow or gatherings, we’ll actually have our traditional muslin, dyed with indigo.” The true blue. Tatxe. 

Learn how to grow and process your own indigo at home with this "recipe" from Elaine Larcade Bourque. 

The “Le Bleu Perdu” project is ongoing at Atelier de la Nature, which, in addition to its spring symposium, featured a presentation and workshop from Malian dye master Aboubakar Fofana in December 2024. Stay up to date with upcoming programming at atelierdelanature.org. 

Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo will be on exhibition at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego until March 16. You can peruse the exhibition highlights, including Moses’s camp dress and the Dubanksys’ histological stains, as well as a series of essays on various aspects of indigo, at mingei.org/exhibitions/blue-gold.