Conservative estimates of Filipino war deaths number 250,000. However, to this day, the death toll of the Philippine-American War remains debated due to the lack of comprehensive records. War’s violence is on full view here. This painting features U.S. soldiers charging over a hill and firing their rifles as Filipino soldiers fall across the foreground. While the scene erases much of the Filipinos’ humanity by caricaturing their faces, the U.S. “Boys in Blue” are shown as heroic warriors. 

The composition emphasizes some of the racist visual tropes that were used in the nineteenth century. At the top, on the hill, white soldiers expertly point and shoot their weapons. At the bottom, Filipinos perish. Remington, who worked as an artist-reporter in Cuba during January 1897 and the summer of 1898, never set foot in the Philippines.