"Cahokia." 1989. Lithograph with hand coloring. Signed, titled and numbered in pencil. Artist blind stamp bottom right. This work is unique and is from a series of twenty unique hand colored impressions. 30" x 22 1/2". It was published and hand colored by Smith at Island Press, Washington University.

Note: The title of this work ("Cahokia") references the pre-Columbian Native American city Cahokia, which was settled around 600 CE and existed until the 14th century. The "Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site" is located across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri, where Smith created this artwork.

Archeologists have concluded that Cahokia was a sophisticated city with complex architecture, still visible today, and occupied by an equally sophisticated society. Cahokia, at its peak, had an estimated population of 40,000. It was the largest city on the continent until the 1780s, when Philadelphia, (which had been colonized by the Europeans from the lands of the Lenape People and had been built in part on the slave trade), became the largest.

The central bird man figure in this work draws on the sandstone artifact known as the "Cahokia Mounds Bird Man Tablet," which was unearthed in 1971 and is now at the Illinois State Museum.

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