Why did the Fathers of our Country feel it was necessary to dress as Indians during the " Boston Tea Party?" 
They were committing acts of vandalism, violence and destruction of others’ property. They had to disguise themselves as something in order to make it hard to recognize them as individuals and hold them accountable. Face paint and feathers are easy.
Also, those actually committing the vandalism in Boston, New York and elsewhere were mostly an undisciplined mob. You wouldn’t have seen Adams, Franklin or Washington engaged in those activities.
Actually it’s been sometyme since I’ve had a history class, the way I remember is the “Boston Tea Party” was supposed to be a protest against a tea tax. So I guess I am wondering why disguse oneself as an Indian,who probably doesn’t drink tea, to protest a tax, simple masks or hoods would conceal one’s identity. Unless of course the real purpose of the “Tea Party” was to get the Indians blamed for destroying property.
Hmmm. I wouldn’t expect an undisciplined mob to plan ahead and dress in “uniform.”
Individual identities could be hidden by face masks. I think the point here was to disguise the group identity, to avoid retaliatory measures. Even if the British “knew” they weren’t really Indians, it’s pretty hard to make a case for any punishment/oppression of the citizenry when every eyewitness can only say it looked like Indians did it.
Nobody expected that it would be thought that Indians actually dumped the tea, just that the actual perpetrators could not be accurately identified. Like a bank robber wearing a Richard Nixon mask – noboday would think Richard Nixon robbed the bank, but they couldn’t identify who was behind it.
Think of the Indian getup as black ski masks. Anonymous, menacing, etc.
Especially since Washington lived in Virginia…
According to this eyewitness account, they were a well-organized mob.
Apparently the ‘disguises’ fooled no one and there was even some considerable conversation between the “Indians” and the ships’ crews. I think they were in costume because A) they’d been drinking and B) this was all a lot of fun and C) perhaps because this costume emphasized their North American idenitities rather than their European roots.
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bibliophage
moderator GQ
Why, just because he said he wasn’t a crook?
The American Indian was used as a symbol of liberty throughout the time period. So, it was more symbolism than anything else. There are accounts that the British troops and sailors knew it was American rebels and were very accomodating. Some sailors even pushed the tea in the harbor themselves. Some had been waiting for months to unload their tea so they probably were anxious to move along.