Manifest Destiny: Its Artful and Artless Descendants
By Liz Goldner
February 1, 2025

Ricardo Duffy, “Pio de Jesus Pico (1801-1894),” 1997, pastel,
charcoal and acrylic on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth ... carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars.” These seemingly poetic words, spoken by the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump on January 20th, belie his true intent: to continue the harsh and inhumane actions, related to colonialism and Manifest Destiny, of his white supremacist forebears.
In the American West those explorers and their followers discovered seemingly endless wilderness that was ripe for the taking, along with Indigenous women who were ripe for the raping. In the catalog to the touring exhibition “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today,” several artworks address the diaries of an 18th century English plantation overseer in Jamaica. Thomas Thistlewood detailed his thousands of acts of sexual assault, rape and torture of enslaved women. Thistlewood’s behavior, personally manifesting the oppressive actions of colonialist domination, were likely commonplace, and have been passed down to our nation’s current leaders.

Ricardo Duffy, “The New Order,” 1996, serigraph. Courtesy of the artist.
The concept of “Manifest Destiny” was in play during colonial times, decades before the term was created. In 1845 columnist and editor John O’Sullivan, a Jacksonian Democrat, coined the phrase, believing that the United States had the “God-given right” to expand westward, using any means necessary, including military force, to acquire land as our country was "destined" to control the entire continent due to its exceptional civilization and values. Manifest Destiny also served as a rationale to strip Native Americans of the land they had occupied for millennia, along with their culture.
Over the last several decades, artists and exhibitions have been increasingly addressing this history of oppressive action. But now returned to office as President, Donald Trump has been appropriating the concept of Manifest Destiny to claim land that doesn’t belong to the United States, including the Panama Canal and Greenland. He has also, influenced by Elon Musk, linked it to Mars. One may wonder — what other Manifest Destiny intentions does Trump entertain? Will he have his military swoop onto land owned by native Americans and again seize their property? Or will he try to undo the Indian Citizen Act of 1924, which granted citizenship to Native Americans born in the U.S., much as he is trying to undo birthright citizenship? On January 28th MSNBC reported, “At least 15 Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico have reported being stopped at their homes and workplaces, questioned or detained by federal law enforcement and asked to produce proof of citizenship during immigration raids since Wednesday, according to Navajo Nation officials.”

Kent Monkman, “Miss Chief, Dance to the Berdashe” 2018, photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
In 1846, soon after O’Sullivan coined the phrase Manifest Destiny, the United States Army initiated the Mexican American War in order to seize the southwestern portion of our continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, even though Mexico had legal claim to Texas and owned California, Arizona and New Mexico. That war lasted until 1848, concluding with the two countries signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States paid Mexico $15 million for the ceded land.
Pio Pico was the last Governor of California under Mexican rule, serving from 1845 to 1846. While the beloved, high-minded statesman adamantly opposed Manifest Destiny and the sale of California to the U.S., he went into the new American governor’s office following the sale, hoping to continue as governor. Instead, he was jailed for three weeks.
Laguna Beach artist Ricardo Duffy, who is distantly related to Pico, has painted several portraits of the governor, including the empathetic “Pio de Jesus Pico (1801-1894)” (1997). One of Duffy’s portraits hung in the Pico House, an historic structure that was originally built by Pico in Los Angeles.

Diego Rivera, “Pan American Unity,” panel five, 1940, fresco mural. Courtesy of the City College of San Francisco.
Duffy, who is 50 percent Indigenous, 25 percent Jewish Lithuanian and 25 percent Irish, created the print “The New Order” in 1996. Presenting a dystopian vision of “Marlboro Country,” the print conveys Manifest Destiny through its Marlboro sign, appropriated from 20th century ads, over which the word, “Monstrous,” is painted. With a finely detailed Western landscape backdrop evoking the Marlboro ads’ vistas, the print contains George Washington's familiar face with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, indicating his collusion with the corporate Marlboro vision. Art Historian Tatiana Reinoza explains, “Duffy’s monstrous country evinces the death and displacement of Indigenous populations and the contemporary forms of tracking and rounding up undocumented immigrants like animals.” The print was exhibited in the acclaimed “Made in California" exhibition (2000) at the L.A. County Museum of Art.
Indigenous Canadian artist Kent Monkman addresses Manifest Destiny in his work, often with humorous aspects. In 2018, he confronted the legacy of the concept using his alter ego, Miss Chief, as a vaudeville dancer and the director of Western movies. He presented this as an installation of paintings, performance pieces, photographs, and silent films at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.

John Gast, “American Progress,” 1872, oil on canvas.
Courtesy of the Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles.
In an academic treatise, Sydney Barofsky, a scholar of the Indigenous Americas at the University of Illinois Chicago, wrote about Diego Rivera’s enormous mural, “Pan American Unity” (1940). “Panel five shows the colonial period in the United States. Caravans and horses signify Manifest Destiny and expansion out West, which directly resulted in the displacement of Indigenous people and the unfathomable destruction of their land. Excavators are placed in mining rigs alongside wooden mechanized elements like a giant screw created by early industrialists. The lower panel shows colonial Americans painting and cataloging Indigenous people with the false idea that they would ‘vanish.’”
By contrast, earlier landscapes painted in the United States depicted westward migration, Manifest Destiny, the conquest of Indigenous people and the seizure of their land by the U.S. government and its minions as ordained by God. Perusing a few of these landscape paintings calls to mind an excerpt of the art catalog, “California Mexicana” (© 2017, Laguna Art Museum). The passage explains that California’s separation from Mexico resulted in part on artists painting distinct visual scenes to reference the very different populations and behavior of the two places — present and future. Many of the landscapes, following that separation, were allegorical, depicting settlers traveling westward, posed as though they already owned the land they were seizing.

Emanuel Leutze, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” 1861, painted mural.
Courtesy of the U.S. Capitol Building.
John Gast’s “American Progress” (1872) depicts an angel-like female figure representing the United States, floating in the sky, dressed in a Roman toga, and carrying a schoolbook and a telegraph wire. She is leading settlers and their entourage, including trains, carriages and eager farmers, bearers of civilization from east to west, while driving out the Indigenous people and buffaloes seen on the left side of the painting.
The mural “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way” (1861) by Emanuel Leutze, a German-born American history painter, is another example. Leutze, best known for “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851), uses a similar style for “Westward the Course,” which is displayed in the U.S. Capitol, nearby the Republican Congressional chambers. The painting depicts fearless pioneering Americans, situated on a cliff at the continental divide, looking westward toward the San Francisco Bay with its golden light — a place that is seemingly theirs for the taking. How fortunate they all seem! But nowhere to be seen are the people who had lived on this magnificent land for many, many centuries.