John Gast’s allegorical painting, “American Progress,” may have had humble origins, but his flamboyant tableau of Manifest Destiny had real impact in spurring the country’s westward expansion in the late 19th century.

Its symbolism still resonates more than 150 years since it was painted. Earlier this summer, the Department of Homeland Security posted an image of the painting on social media under the heading, “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.” It drew some 37,000 likes on X.

To the Trump administration, the painting epitomizes patriotism and the progress spread by American pioneers advancing technology, democracy and the blessings of Western civilization.

Some historians, however, say, that D.H.S.’s battle cry, in the context of the painting, glorifies racism and glosses over just whose homeland America is.

The heritage exemplified by Gast’s painting, they say, neglects to acknowledge that much of the homeland Americans are being exhorted to defend belonged to Mexicans and Indigenous tribes who were forcibly removed or died of cholera spread by white settlers.

“The ironies are profound,” Martha A. Sandweiss, an emerita history professor at Princeton University and the founder and director of The Princeton Slavery Project, said in an interview. “The painting — commissioned by the publisher of a popular western guidebook — does not depict people defending their homeland. On the contrary, it depicts a group of white men (and an angel-like woman wearing a ‘Star of Empire’) invading the homeland of others.”