The Boston Tea Party

It is exam time at our house. I have transcribed Mariel's Boston Tea Party narration from her exam tape for your reading pleasure:

Hi, it's [Mariel] again, with Exams of 2008, and I am going to describe to you the Boston Tea Party. I'm describing it in the context of a girl who got to watch it and the Boston Massacre.

Okay, just a minute.

It was a cold March night, and a band of young men were coming, running over the hills with tomahawks. They had stained their skin brown, and their faces were hideously painted. Their heads were adorned with feathers.

Cheryl shivered in the night. Someone shook her. She looked up and saw the face of Mama. Together they went down to the entryway where Duncan and Samuel and Papa were waiting. And- and- they started walking towards the harbor.

"Mama, what's happening?" asked Cheryl.

"Well, [unintelligible]" she whispered in her ear. Cheryl snuggled close to her.

As they drew near to the harbor, they saw thousands and thousands of other lights bobbing and coming this way. When they had reached the harbor, quite a crowd of colonists-- and some Tories-- had gathered there.

(Um, P.S. A Tory is someone who is for more power for the king, and a Whig is for more power for the people. Okay, just thought I'd let you know that! Okay.)

And the young men, or, AKA, Indians, boarded the ship went down in the hold and brought out chests and chests of tea. They opened them with their tomahawks and threw each and every tea bag into the harbor. It was a terrible, terrifying waste, for there were over 350 boxes of tea.

No one stopped it.

When King George heard about it, he said, "The colonists now must either surrender or fight!" And the colonists had no intention of surrendering, so they fought.

Thank you.