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Manifest Destiny
17” in height X 9” in diameter
This piece received 3rd place in the non-traditional category at the 2000 Red Earth Festival in OK City, an Honorable Mention in the combined categories of artwork at the 2000 Cahokia Mounds Contemporary Indian Art show in Collinsville, IL and 1st place at the 2001 Five Civilized Tribe’s Art Under the Oaks show in Muskogee, OK. Various European diseases such as small pox, measles and typhoid brought over on Columbus’s numerous voyages and by other early explorers, killed over 80 percent of the Native American population of North America by the middle of the 16th century. Native Americans call it “The Great Dying” and it killed more Indians than all of the Indian-European and Indian-United States conflicts and wars combined. This piece depicts the suffering and hopelessness of the Native Americans who were devastated by these diseases which left them vulnerable to conquest by European and American armies and settlers through the latter part of the 19th century. These diseases made possible the doctrine of Manifest Destiny – the belief that it was the destiny of the United States to expand across the continent of North America. A continent occupied by Native Americans.