The Octoroon
The Octoroon is a play by Dion Boucicault that opened in 1859 at The Winter Garden Theatre, New York City.
It explores the lives of free whites, and enslaved mixed-race and black Americans resident at a Louisiana plantation called Terrebonne.
The word octoroon signifies a person of one-eighth African ancestry and typically seven-eighths white.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites The Octoroon with the earliest record of the word "mashup" with the quote: "He don't understand; he speaks a mash up of Indian, French, and Mexican."
George Peyton returns to the United States from a trip to France to find that the plantation he has inherited is in dire financial straits as a result of his late uncle's beneficence.
Jacob McClosky, the man who ruined Judge Peyton, has come to inform George and his aunt (who was bequeathed a life interest in the estate) that their land will be sold and their slaves auctioned off separately.
Salem Scudder, a kind Yankee, was Judge Peyton's business partner; though he wishes he could save Terrebonne, he has no money.
George is courted by the rich Southern belle heiress Dora Sunnyside, but he finds himself falling in love with Zoe, the mixed-race enslaved daughter of his uncle by one of the slaves.
McClosky intercepts a young slave boy, Paul, who is bringing a mailbag to the house that contains a letter from one of Judge Peyton's old debtors.
When George asks why, Zoe explains that she is an octoroon, and the law prevents a white man from marrying anyone with the smallest black heritage.
Scudder enters to deliver the good news that McClosky was proven guilty of murdering Paul and that Terrebonne now belongs to George.
