Indien (1778), often L'Indien, was a frigate built for the U.S. Commissioners in France — Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee — to a design by the French naval architect Jacques Boux. She was laid down early in 1777 by a private shipyard in Amsterdam and launched in February 1778. Apparently she was built with the scantlings and lines of a small 74-gun Third Rate ship of the line but was a frigate in construction. In 1780 the Duke of Luxembourg chartered her to the navy of South Carolina and she sailed as South Carolina.