South Carolina was founded as a rice-growing colony to supply food to the sugar-growing colonies in the Caribbean. They bought enslaved agricultural workers fro

South Carolina was founded as a rice-growing colony to supply food to the sugar-growing colonies in the Caribbean. They bought enslaved agricultural workers from west Africa because they had the skills to grow rice more effectively. Rice wasn't native to the Americas, so buying natives wouldn't have resulted in the significantly higher rice yields. ---- sidenote: They also bought people who knew how to cultivate indigo for dyes. This meant that indigo was the dye most-available for the continental army in 1775.