Pioneers of America: Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way 1897 old Ontario print bitter retreat through Kentucky's hills

bitter retreat through Kentucky's hills toward the Ohio

William Orlando Butler

on his collar marking him as a citizen-soldier of empire's loud debut

The New Cathedral

The likeness carries the careful gravity of a soldier still answering for a battle the army would never quite forgive him for

Pioneers of America: Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way 1897 old Ontario print bitter retreat through Kentucky's hillsPioneers of America: Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way 1897 borrows Bishop Berkeley's old prophecy and dresses it in late century chromolithograph splendor wagon wheels, trail dust, and the long American habit of mistaking momentum for destiny. By 1897 the frontier was already declared closed, which makes this image less reportage than mythmaking in arrears. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical