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Pueblo Indian Watercolors: Watercolors and Artists

Justino Herrera, That Is No Longer Our Smoke Sign

Justino Herrera served in the United States Army during World War II. Perhaps because of his experiences during the war, when he returned to New Mexico, he painted this watercolor about the explosion of a nuclear bomb. The painting depicts five people looking towards the United States Capitol behind which rises the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. The figures include a Spanish Franciscan friar, symbolic of the Catholic missionaries sent from Spain to convert the Native American population to Christianity; a doctor; a male and a female Pueblo Indian; and an Anglo school teacher.

The doctor and teacher represent the new science and education brought into the region by the arrival of the United States government in 1848. The building on the left is a mission church, and the building on the right is a school with the United States flag in front. The world's first atomic bomb was developed in the northern New Mexico town of Los Alamos. With irony, the artist titled the painting That Is No Longer Our Smoke Sign. The title may also refer to the stereotype of Indians sending messages using puffs of smoke, even though Pueblo Indians did not traditionally communicate through smoke signals.

Questions for Students

The relationship between the United States government and Native American peoples has changed a great deal from the eighteenth century to the present. The federal government has played many roles including cultural missionary, educator, landlord, protector, strong-armed disciplinarian, health-care provider, and in the minds of many—an oppressor. Over time Pueblo Indians have been variously considered wards of the state, citizens of sovereign nations, and citizens of the United States of America who were granted full voting rights only in 1948.

Why has the government's role towards Native Americans shifted over time? What symbols of government does the artist use in this painting? How has federal government policy toward Native Americans changed in the last twenty years? What impact have Indian rights groups had on federal policy in recent years?

Pictured above: Justino Herrera, That Is No Longer Our Smoke Sign, about 1950s, watercolor and pencil on paperboard, 35.7 x 46 cm. Corbin-Henderson Collection, Gift of Alice H. Rossin