Rally Mohawks! Bring out your axes, and tell King George we’ll pay no taxes on his foreign tea . . . —a song of 1773, Panel 3, 1954, Inscription: No 3 THE MASQUERADE, Jacob Lawrence, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross, © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
This image and caption are included in one of the popular history books Lawrence used to research the Struggle series, although he visualized the scene differently. In Panel 3, Lawrence painted three “Mohawks” entangled with two guards in a melee of brawny arms, painted faces, and multicolored feathers. Though a hand-to-hand struggle probably never took place, Lawrence’s alternative version captures how the colonists created parody songs and claimed Indigenous identity for themselves.
On the evening of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams, leader of the Sons of Liberty (a secret organization fighting British taxation of the colonies), rallied a group of colonists, dressed as members of the Mohawk Nation to signal they were no longer subjects of the British crown, to board enemy ships and dump their cargo into Boston Harbor. Lawrence excerpted lyrics from this protest song to title his painting of the Boston Tea Party. Although the actual event was not a confrontation and damaged property only, he reimagined the scene as close and violent combat.
Excerpt from “Rallying Son of the Tea Party at the Green Dragon” in Francis Samuel Drake, Tea Leaves: Being A Collection of Letters and Documents (Boston: A. O. Crane, 1884)
Rally Mohawks! bring out your axes,
And tell King George we’ll pay no taxes
On his foreign tea;
His threats are vain, and vain to think
To force our girls and wives to drink
His vile Bohea!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our chiefs at the Green Dragon.