Teaching Packet

Manifest Destiny and the West

Part of Uncovering America

Grade Level

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On this Page:

  1. Overview
  2. Selected Works
  3. Activity: Point of View Narratives
  4. Activity: Developing Cultural Awareness
  5. Activity: American Exceptionalism
  6. Additional Resources
Train tracks slice across a flat, grassy landscape with log cabins to our left and a river and mountains to our right in this horizontal lithograph. The scene is printed with vivid colors and is packed with tiny details. A train engine puffing black smoke pulls five cars from the bottom right corner away into the distance, angling to our left before disappearing on the horizon, which comes about three quarters of the way up the composition. Writing across the tops of the first three cars reads, “Through line New York San Francisco” in all caps. The open windows on the fourth car are crowded with riders. Tucked into the lower left corner, eleven log-built structures are mostly clustered closely together. Children play and run around the open door of the building closest to us, which is labeled “Public School.” Other people in long skirts or suits, some in hats, stand waving near the tracks. Four men in long-sleeved shirts or jackets and long pants, all with hats, chop down trees or hold shovels in a wooded area in the lower left corner. Four wagons, three of them covered and drawn by ox, move away from the town. All of the people in the town and on the train appear to have pale, peachy skin. The black smoke pouring from the train engine turns to slate gray where it blankets the ground to our right. Two people with brown skin, long black hair, feathered headdresses, and yellow and red clothing sit on horseback and are nearly swallowed by the smoke. A glassy, blue river winds into the distance to our left. One person is in a canoe on the river, which is lined by pines and other trees. White clouds kick up against the snowy mountain peaks that span the right half of the horizon against an otherwise bright blue sky. The margin around the scene is foxed, speckled brown against the white paper. Printed below the image, in all caps, the title reads, “Across the Continent. “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.” In tiny letters, immediately below the printed image are three more inscriptions. They read, to the left, “J.M. Ives, Del.” At the center, “Entered according to Act of Congress in the year AD. 1868 by Currier & Ives in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.” And to the right, in all caps, “Drawn by F.F. Palmer.”
Frances Flora Bond Palmer, James Merritt Ives, Currier and Ives, Across the Continent: "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way", 1868, hand-colored lithograph, with touches of gum arabic, on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.160

Overview

In what ways was the US settled and unsettled in the 19th century?

What role did artists play in shaping public understandings of the US West?

When you think about the US West, what images and stories come to mind?

Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way” shows a vision of settling the United States that in many ways still resonates today.

A wagon train of settlers; expansive, empty lands; evidence of the concept of “progress”—these elements appear again and again in works of art and other media in the 19th century. Together these elements illustrate the idea of manifest destiny, a belief (held by some) that expansion of the US westward toward the Pacific Ocean was destined and justified. Across the Continent helped perpetuate this narrative among people who purchased and saw the print. Westward expansion was not inevitable, though, nor was it necessarily easy or pleasant for those who were impacted by the country’s rapid growth.

The United States paid $15 million to France in 1803 for lands that doubled the size of the country in what many have called the “real estate deal of the century,” the Louisiana Purchase. Yet France, and Spain before it, did not have actual legal rights to the land other than claims they asserted through colonial conquest. By purchasing rights to the territory of Louisiana—stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains—from France, the United States averted fights with the Spanish or French, but precipitated conflict with the hundreds of Native nations who lived in those lands.The Indian Removal Act of 1830, passed during President Andrew Jackson’s tenure, established treaty making as the main mechanism for relocating indigenous peoples to make way for primarily white settlers. However, when tribes refused to sign treaties and leave their ancestral homelands, Jackson ignored legislation and ordered troops to forcibly relocate people. Thousands of people were killed during death marches, including members of the Muscogee (Creek), Chahta (Choctaw), Aniyunwiya (Cherokee), Chikasha (Chickasaw), Seminole, and Potawatomi nations. Even more were decimated by disease, including the Mandan. Others fought back or resisted, like the Seminole, Lakota, and Diné (Navajo) nations. In general, tribes across the country relocated, voluntarily or not, as settlers and new immigrants claimed land.

Other people also inhabited the US West in the 19th century. French Canadian traders and Spanish colonists and missionaries had arrived centuries earlier. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, news spread quickly and immigrants from around the world rushed to San Francisco, including thousands of Chinese migrants who sailed across the Pacific. Both freed and enslaved Africans and African Americans also lived throughout the West; the Compromise of 1850 admitted both slave and free states after new territory was acquired in the US–Mexican War.

There is no single story of the West. Whose perspectives, experiences, and cultures are visible and represented in the works of art in this module? Whose stories are left out or marginalized? And what more might we need to find out?

Selected Works

  • Train tracks slice across a flat, grassy landscape with log cabins to our left and a river and mountains to our right in this horizontal lithograph. The scene is printed with vivid colors and is packed with tiny details. A train engine puffing black smoke pulls five cars from the bottom right corner away into the distance, angling to our left before disappearing on the horizon, which comes about three quarters of the way up the composition. Writing across the tops of the first three cars reads, “Through line New York San Francisco” in all caps. The open windows on the fourth car are crowded with riders. Tucked into the lower left corner, eleven log-built structures are mostly clustered closely together. Children play and run around the open door of the building closest to us, which is labeled “Public School.” Other people in long skirts or suits, some in hats, stand waving near the tracks. Four men in long-sleeved shirts or jackets and long pants, all with hats, chop down trees or hold shovels in a wooded area in the lower left corner. Four wagons, three of them covered and drawn by ox, move away from the town. All of the people in the town and on the train appear to have pale, peachy skin. The black smoke pouring from the train engine turns to slate gray where it blankets the ground to our right. Two people with brown skin, long black hair, feathered headdresses, and yellow and red clothing sit on horseback and are nearly swallowed by the smoke. A glassy, blue river winds into the distance to our left. One person is in a canoe on the river, which is lined by pines and other trees. White clouds kick up against the snowy mountain peaks that span the right half of the horizon against an otherwise bright blue sky. The margin around the scene is foxed, speckled brown against the white paper. Printed below the image, in all caps, the title reads, “Across the Continent. “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.” In tiny letters, immediately below the printed image are three more inscriptions. They read, to the left, “J.M. Ives, Del.” At the center, “Entered according to Act of Congress in the year AD. 1868 by Currier & Ives in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.” And to the right, in all caps, “Drawn by F.F. Palmer.”
  • This vertical portrait shows the head, shoulders, and chest of an indiginous Iowan man with brown skin whose face is mostly painted with red and green. His body and face are angled to our right and he looks into the distance with dark eyes. Crimson-red paint covers his forehead, the sides of his cheeks, and neck. Four parallel lines of pine green angle up his right cheek, on our left, like the four fingers of a hand. A green line on the other cheek could be the thumb, and the palm might have left the green mark on his chin. The man’s nose and cheeks near the nose are unpainted. His spiky headdress is ornamented with two feathers and is held in place with a wide band of dark fur that wraps across his forehead and around the back of his head. Earrings hang from the lobes and tops of his ears, and he wears a necklace made up of bear claws, beads, and seashells, including an oval shaped, medallion-like shell at his throat. His garment is made up of white fur and what appears to be tawny-brown animal hide. Tan-colored clouds create a screen across an ice-blue sky in the background.
  • We look across the gleaming, forest-green surface of a lake at the foot of tall, jagged mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The lake is flanked by a steep, gingerbread-brown hill on the left and a shoreline that forms a backward C curving from the lower center around and back along the right side of the composition. Strong sunlight from the upper left illuminates the center of the left-hand hill and the shoreline. The ground to our right is carpeted in rust-red, sage-green, and tan growth and is dotted with boulders. Tall trees with rust-brown trunks, crooked branches, and narrow canopies of caramel-brown and olive-green leaves fill the far end. Closest to us are dead tree trunks jutting out of the water and or lying on a flat, rocky outcropping nearby. Beyond the outcropping is a small black bear wandering down a sliver of sand-colored ground at the water’s edge. The hill on the left is covered with vertical rows of upright jagged boulders and slender, dark green trees marching up its slopes. A narrow, artic-blue waterfall cascades down its right side to empty into the lake. A thick layer of towering blue-gray clouds rises over the hill and lake, stretching back to the looming, snow-covered peaks that nearly brush the top edge of the canvas. The sky around the peak is vivid blue, scattered with high white clouds. The artist signed the lower right, “ABierstadt” with the A and B joined as a monogram.
  • Sheer, vertical, cliffs, brightly lit in cream white and rust orange by the low sun, tower over a band of people riding horses into the distance in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The glowing cliffs dominate the upper right quadrant of the painting. They lighten from burnt orange along the jagged tops to flame orange down the steep sides, and are and warm, parchment white near the earth. One tall, narrow promontory to our right looms over a range of lower, rounded cliffs. As the cliffs move into the distance, they are shrouded with a lavender-purple haze. The land closest to us dips into a shallow valley at the bottom center of the composition, leading away from us. The dirt-packed earth is dotted with pine-green, scrubby bushes and vegetation and a grove of low, gnarled trees a short distance to our right. One chestnut-brown horse walks along the path at the bottom center of the composition, lagging behind a cluster of at least two dozen horses and riders winding into the distance. The horses range from ivory white to tawny brown and charcoal gray. The riders are loosely painted so some details are indistinct, but they all seem to have brown skin and dark hair. They wear feathered headdresses and garments in teal blue, fawn brown, or golden yellow. They ride over a low hill toward a crystal-blue river, and then back along a flat expanse toward a row of minuscule, triangular tepees lining the horizon in the deep distance. The horizon comes halfway up the composition, and the tepees are backed by a row of rose-pink, flat-topped cliffs. A pale yellow disk hangs low in the sky, over the distant cliffs. The sky above deepens from soft, lilac purple along the horizon to ice and sapphire blue along the top. A few wispy clouds are burnished orange in the sunlight. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “TYMoran 1881,” with the T, Y, and M overlapping to make a monogram.
  • A band of indigenous Americans ride horses toward and through a herd of buffalo, which spreads along a river that winds through plains to mountains in the deep distance in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is lit with golden light that warms the browns and harvest yellow of the landscape. Several dead or injured buffalo lie across the ground close to us, along with the body of one hunter, barely visible between the bodies of two animals. Just beyond the corpses, one hunter rides a rearing white horse as he lifts a spear lined with feathers high over a charging buffalo to our right of center. Facing away from us, the rider has light brown skin and a feather headdress over long dark hair. He wears a pumpkin-orange loincloth and red and orange bands encircle the ankle, thigh, wrist, and upper arm facing us. Sage-green grass grows in tufts on the dirt ground, which is littered with several animal skulls around the charging buffalo and rider. A smaller buffalo looks on from our left, and a prairie dog pokes its head out of hole in the ground in the lower left corner. A little distance away to our right, along the edge of the canvas, seven hunters gallop into the scene, leaning forward over their horses’ necks. The dozen or so buffalo nearby, as well as a fox and two deer, move away from the hunters, headed to our left. Hundreds of buffalo dot the landscape along the banks of the winding river and some wade in the water. A few trees rise on the plain but the land is mostly flat until it reaches the mountains and cliffs along the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition. Forms along the horizon could be a line of clouds or snow-covered moutains in the deep distance. A few wispy white clouds float across the watery blue sky above. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner: “Albert Bierstadt.”
  • A flatboat with eight light-skinned men floats toward us down a wide river in this horizontal painting. The boat nearly spans the width of the composition and has low sides and a shallowly arched, low cabin upon which the men gather. At the center, a man with dark hair and wearing light blue trousers and a pink shirt dances with one foot and both arms raised. To our right a seated musician plays a fiddle, and to our left a smiling man holds up a metal pot and strikes the flat bottom with the back of his fingers. The remaining men sit or recline around the musicians and dancing man, some looking toward the dancer and two looking out at us. Bedrolls and animal skins are stored in the cabin below. The olive-green surface of the river is streaked with pale blue. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The trees and riverbanks in the distance are hazy beneath a watery blue sky.
  • Four men on horseback riding side by side hold revolvers up in the air in this freestanding bronze sculpture. All four wear gloves with long cuffs and wide-brimmed hats. Their eyes are delineated as slits to suggest they are closed or nearly so, and their mouths are wide open. Their right hands, to our left, are raised holding revolvers in the air, and they hold the reins of the horses with their other hands. Three of the men have bushy mustaches and one, second from our right, has a full, trimmed beard. Two have long, shoulder-length hair, which alternate with the other two who seem to have close-cropped hair. The horses all run with their legs at different angles, all with two legs off the ground except the leftmost horse, who has three feet midair in a long stride. The horses’ heads pull forward as the riders pull up. In this photograph the sculpture is angled away from us to our left, so we see the most of the rider and horse closest to us to our right. He wears wide chaps, and a booted foot is snug in the stirrup on the side we can see. The base beneath the horses’ feet is modeled coarsely to suggest earth. Light creates white highlights on the dark brown bronze, and some surfaces are a little rough, especially on the horses’ bodies. The artist inscribed the right side of the base, “Frederic Remington” and a nearby inscription reads, “Copyrighted by Frederic Remington 1902.”

Activity: Point of View Narratives

Train tracks slice across a flat, grassy landscape with log cabins to our left and a river and mountains to our right in this horizontal lithograph. The scene is printed with vivid colors and is packed with tiny details. A train engine puffing black smoke pulls five cars from the bottom right corner away into the distance, angling to our left before disappearing on the horizon, which comes about three quarters of the way up the composition. Writing across the tops of the first three cars reads, “Through line New York San Francisco” in all caps. The open windows on the fourth car are crowded with riders. Tucked into the lower left corner, eleven log-built structures are mostly clustered closely together. Children play and run around the open door of the building closest to us, which is labeled “Public School.” Other people in long skirts or suits, some in hats, stand waving near the tracks. Four men in long-sleeved shirts or jackets and long pants, all with hats, chop down trees or hold shovels in a wooded area in the lower left corner. Four wagons, three of them covered and drawn by ox, move away from the town. All of the people in the town and on the train appear to have pale, peachy skin. The black smoke pouring from the train engine turns to slate gray where it blankets the ground to our right. Two people with brown skin, long black hair, feathered headdresses, and yellow and red clothing sit on horseback and are nearly swallowed by the smoke. A glassy, blue river winds into the distance to our left. One person is in a canoe on the river, which is lined by pines and other trees. White clouds kick up against the snowy mountain peaks that span the right half of the horizon against an otherwise bright blue sky. The margin around the scene is foxed, speckled brown against the white paper. Printed below the image, in all caps, the title reads, “Across the Continent. “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.” In tiny letters, immediately below the printed image are three more inscriptions. They read, to the left, “J.M. Ives, Del.” At the center, “Entered according to Act of Congress in the year AD. 1868 by Currier & Ives in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.” And to the right, in all caps, “Drawn by F.F. Palmer.”
Frances Flora Bond Palmer, James Merritt Ives, Currier and Ives, Across the Continent: "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way", 1868, hand-colored lithograph, with touches of gum arabic, on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.160

Invite individuals or small groups of students to examine reproductions of Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way.” Ask them to identify the characters in the work, the setting, and what story is being communicated. Share with them that the artist was a British immigrant who never visited the West, and that the print’s audience was likely white European Americans living in the Eastern United States. Then, introduce one of the books listed below or tell a story about a specific indigenous nation’s experience with US settlement.

  • Brian Floca, Locomotive (New York: Atheneum Books, 2013)
  • Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney, Black Cowboys, Wild Horses (New York: Dial Books, 1998)
  • Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House (New York: Disney-Hyperion, 2002)
  • Sherry Garland, Valley of the Moon: The Diary of María Rosalia de Milagros (New York: Scholastic, 2001)

After reading or hearing the story, identify areas of inaccuracy or exaggeration in Across the Continent with students. What changes do they suggest for the picture? Whose perspectives should be included in the story? Ask them to write or create a new story from a single point of view. What would they see, hear, feel, and experience? Alternatively, students could modify or create a new version of Across the Continent using art materials or perform a dramatic story as a small group.

Encourage students to develop a new title or headline for their story or work of art after it’s completed.

Activity: Developing Cultural Awareness

Do you call the United States home? Research which indigenous peoples lived where you do prior to colonization. Do they still live there? If not, under what circumstances did they leave? What kinds of interactions did they have with the US government? Where do you see evidence of their presence, past or present, in your community today?

Investigate one of these peoples more deeply using a cultural iceberg model. Go beyond what is “visible” on the surface, such as food, celebrations, and dress, to uncover deeper, “invisible” aspects of culture, including values, social norms, ethics, and attitudes.

Begin by listening to indigenous classmates, teachers, or other living members of the community. They may not live in the area anymore, but many American Indian communities have a robust digital presence.

How might you honor, recognize, or make visible the story and culture of these people to others in your school or community? Share the model of a land acknowledgment with your students to spark their thinking.

Activity: American Exceptionalism

We look across the gleaming, forest-green surface of a lake at the foot of tall, jagged mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The lake is flanked by a steep, gingerbread-brown hill on the left and a shoreline that forms a backward C curving from the lower center around and back along the right side of the composition. Strong sunlight from the upper left illuminates the center of the left-hand hill and the shoreline. The ground to our right is carpeted in rust-red, sage-green, and tan growth and is dotted with boulders. Tall trees with rust-brown trunks, crooked branches, and narrow canopies of caramel-brown and olive-green leaves fill the far end. Closest to us are dead tree trunks jutting out of the water and or lying on a flat, rocky outcropping nearby. Beyond the outcropping is a small black bear wandering down a sliver of sand-colored ground at the water’s edge. The hill on the left is covered with vertical rows of upright jagged boulders and slender, dark green trees marching up its slopes. A narrow, artic-blue waterfall cascades down its right side to empty into the lake. A thick layer of towering blue-gray clouds rises over the hill and lake, stretching back to the looming, snow-covered peaks that nearly brush the top edge of the canvas. The sky around the peak is vivid blue, scattered with high white clouds. The artist signed the lower right, “ABierstadt” with the A and B joined as a monogram.
Albert Bierstadt, Mount Corcoran, c. 1876-1877, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.4
John Mix Stanley, The Trapper's Cabin, 1858, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran), 2014.79.44

American exceptionalism is the belief or perception that the United States is special in comparison to other countries. While the concept has a long, complex history, exceptionalism took hold in the 19th century in a distinct way. The country’s rapid and frequently violent acquisition of territory was defended by many in power who claimed the United States was destined by God to expand westward. The link between manifest destiny and exceptionalism was further solidified in 1893 by historian Frederick Turner, whose “Frontier Thesis” claimed that the experience of pioneers who blazed the frontier uniquely strengthened and distinguished American democracy.

Many of the works in this module connect in some way to the concept of American exceptionalism. Which work of art in this module best illustrates this ideology? Ask your students to select one work, conduct additional research, and defend their choice using any visible and uncovered evidence.

Extend this activity by having a group discussion about American exceptionalism. What do your students think about this concept? How has American exceptionalism been both a positive and negative force? Where can they see this belief being promoted today?

Additional Resources

1816 map of the United States created by John Melish, Library of Congress

American Indian Removal: What Does It Mean to Remove a People? lesson unit, National Museum of the American Indian

Essential Understandings about American Indians, National Museum of the American Indian

Westward Expansion: Encounters at a Cultural Crossroads lesson unit, Library of Congress

Westward Expansion (1801–1861) lesson unit, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Growing Crisis of Sectionalism in Antebellum America: A House Dividing lesson unit, National Endowment for the Humanities

Rae Carson, Walk on Earth a Stranger (Gold Seer Trilogy, Book 1) (New York: HarperCollins, 2016) – grades 7–12 historical fiction

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