50 STATES > Louisiana

We know about Jeremge Beauchamp because his ship was carrying the first large shipment of indigo pigment to be sent back to France. It was hoped that indigo – a cash crop that was an integral part of Colonial Louisiana slavery – would make the fledgling colony solvent. A senior Capuchin priest who worked for The Company of the Indies (the company that had a complete monopoly on all trade in the French colonial world) broke the news of the ship’s sinking, writing of the “public calamity” to his senior Abbé, and explaining that the only reasonable cause for the loss was God’s vengeance, raised by the colonists’ failure to sufficiently punish Beauchamp and his Cabin Boy for their “monstrous crimes”.