# Rice growers, indigotiers and sugar masters on the German Coast  
From quite early on, the French West India Company encouraged ricefarming to solve the problem of food shortages in Louisiana. The captains of the first vessels sent to the coasts of Africa were instructed to acquire rice seeds and find people who knew how to cultivate this crop, which was perfectly suited to the subtropical climate of the Gulf Coast (Donnan, 1969, p. 636). The Africans who developed rice-farming in Louisiana had been exported from the coast stretching from Sine Saloum and the Gambia to Sierra Leone. This area was the maritime province of Mali, the vast empire centred on the Joliba (Niger) River where the main species of West African rice (Oryza glaberrima) had been domesticated since the second millennium BCE (Portères, 1951, p. 18). Many Malian peoples, including the Senufo, Somono, Bozo and Songhai, were deported under the generic name Bambara through Galam and Saint-Louis, the two French trading posts on the Senegal River. Wild indigo, which symbolized wealth and fertility, grew along these rivers. Women controlled trade in the blue dye from Soninkeland to Hausaland, and everyone from the Sahel and savanna grasslands of West Africa was likely to have at least a basic knowledge of indigo dyeing, since it was not reserved for any specific caste. Blacksmiths, weavers, woodworkers and leatherworkers, whether free or enslaved, could practise the trade. Africans also herded cattle on the vacheries (ranches) of Louisiana. In West Africa this was the exclusive area of expertise of the Fulbe, known as the Nègres de nation Poullard in Louisiana.