On the night of December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty (a loosely organized group that focused on colonists’ rights) crept aboard three ships in Boston Harbor, the Beaver, the Dartmouth, and the Eleanor, dressed as Native Americans. They seized, smashed, and then dumped into the harbor 340 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company to protest the British Parliament’s oppressive Tea Act of 1773. Approximately 92,000 pounds of tea with a value of $1.7 million dollars were destroyed that night because the colonists were upset that they did not have a voice in Parliament and were being taxed without their consent. “Tea, Destroyed by Indians” was written anonymously and distributed to colonists to gain support for the Patriot cause against British oppression. The poem functions to rouse the public in much the same way as Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre in 1770. The poet romanticizes the Boston Tea Party, portraying it as a grandiose incident and a demonstration in defense of civil liberties the colonists felt they should have.