Low Country Rice

Notes from N. Butler podcast.

Cultivation of rice requires hours of work ankle deep in mud

Racial way of thinking about labour gave rise to importing african slaves rather than white labourers.  They could better withstand the heat and malaria.

The method, tools and language of rice production have a lot to do with west african rice production.

Inland Rice v. Tidal Rice:  How to manage and deploy the water.  Most used inland method through the end of the Revolution.  Swamps, rivers, and resevoirs used to flood the fields.  Tidal method only in 19th century.

miles of cleared cypres swamp.  Earthen embankments and wooden trunks
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Hist of SC, Yates:  This from a report by Royal Gov. Glenn --

As to rice and indigo, then the chief crops of South Carolina, Governor Glen makes the following observations: "Rice is not the worse for being a little green when cut. They let it remain on the stubble till dry, which will be in about two or three days, if the weather be favorable, and then they house or put it in large stacks.

Afterwards it is threshed with a flail and then winnowed; which was formerly a very tedious operation, but it is now performed with greater ease by a very simple machine, a wind fan, but lately used here and a prodigious improvement.

"The next part of the process is grinding, which is done in small mills made of wood of about two feet in diameter. It is then winnowed again and afterwards put into a mortar made of wood, sufficient to contain from half a bushel to a bushel, where it is beat with a pestle of a size suitable to the mortar and the strength of the person who is to pound it. This is done to free the rice from a thick skin and is the most laborious part of the work.

It is then sifted from the flour and dust made by the pounding; and afterwards by a wire-sieve called a market-sieve, it is separated from the broken and the small rice, which fits it for the barrels in which it is carried to market.

"They reckon thirty slaves a proper number for a rice plantation and to be tended with one overseer. These in favorable seasons and on good land will produce a surprising quantity of rice; but that I may not be blamed by those who, having been induced to come here on such favorable accounts and may not reap so great a harvest, and that I may not mislead any person whatever, I choose rather to mention the common computation throughout the province; which is that each working hand employed in a rice plantation makes four barrels and a half of rice, each barrel weighing five hundred pounds neat ; besides a sufficient quantity of provisions of all kinds for the slaves, horses, cattle and poultry of the plantation for the ensuing year.

"Indigo is of several sorts. What we have gone mostly upon is the sort generally cultivated in the sugar islands, which requires a high, loose soil, tolerably rich, and is an annual plant; but the nilco sort, which is common in this country, is much more hardy and luxuriant, and is perennial. Its stalk dies every year, but it shoots up again next spring. The indigo made from it as of as good a quality as the other, and it will grow on very indifferent land, provided it be dry and loose. "

An acre of good land may produce about eighty pounds of good indigo, and one slave may manage two acres and upwards, and raise provisions besides, and have all the winter months to saw lumber and be otherwise employed in; but as much of the land hitherto used for indigo is improper I am persuaded that that not above thirty pounds weight of good indigo per acre can be expected from the land at present cultivated. Perhaps we are not conversant enough in this commodity, either in the culture of the plant, or in the method of managing or manufacturing it, to write with certainty.

I am afraid that the lime water that some use to make the particles subside, contrary, as I am informed, to the practice of the French, is prejudicial to it, by precipitating different kinds of particles, and consequently incorporating them with the indigo. "But I cannot leave this subject without observing how conveniently and profitable, as to the charge of labor, both indigo and rice may be managed by the same persons, for the labor attending indigo being over in the summer months those who were employed in it may afterwards manufacture rice in the ensuing part of the year, when it becomes most laborious; and after doing all this, they will have some time to spare for sawing lumber and making hogsheads and other staves, to supply the sugar colonies."

Rice in the low country