John Gast painted the 1872 painting American Progress, one of the best-known visual symbols of Manifest Destiny. The work presents westward expansion as a triumphant movement of settlers, technology, and “civilization” across North America.
Gast’s central figure is a woman often interpreted as Columbia, the personification of the United States. She carries a book and telegraph wire while moving westward. Behind her are settlers, farms, stagecoaches, railroads, and other signs of expansion. The landscape ahead is darker and includes Native people and bison moving away, reflecting the displacement and violence hidden by the painting’s celebratory message.
The painting was commissioned by publisher George Crofutt and widely distributed through chromolithographic reproductions in travel guides. That circulation helped make it more influential than its relatively small original size might suggest. It is sometimes confused with grand landscape paintings by Albert Bierstadt or Thomas Cole, but Gast’s work is specifically an allegory of Manifest Destiny. The original is held by the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles.