Cyrus Edwin Dallin didn’t lay eyes on a sculpture until he was past 16. In the Utah Territory settlement of Springville, where he was born in 1861 in a log cabin, art was a foreign concept. The pioneer families who carved out this town brought with them only the necessities for survival. Sculpture had no place on the frontier.

Yet from this remote outpost, Dallin emerged to become one of the most prolific and celebrated American sculptors of his generation. At 19, he left Utah for Boston to study under the noted sculptor Truman H. Bartlett, later continuing his training in Paris. By the time of his death in 1943, he had created more than 260 works including some of the most iconic sculptures in the country.

Among his most enduring pieces are the “Angel Moroni”, which stands atop the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a towering equestrian statue of Paul Revere in Boston. But Dallin is perhaps best remembered for his powerful depictions of American Indian subjects – works praised throughout his career for their realism and reverence. That focus can be traced back to his childhood in Springville.

Located 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, Springville was little more than a cluster of cabins and adobe homes in the mid-1800s. Cyrus’ parents, Thomas and Jane Dallin, were among the early Church settlers there in 1851. While life within the settlement’s adobe walls was defined by toil and scarcity, the world beyond offered young Cyrus a kind of wild freedom – and lasting inspiration.

Bands of Ute tribal members camped nearby, and he regularly played with the boys from those encampments. They shaped miniature animals from soft clay found along the creeks. Encouraged by his mother, who baked his earliest molds in her oven, Dallin’s creative spark only grew.

At 6, he began sculpting and sketching what he saw. As a teenager, he worked with his father in Utah’s Tintic Mining District near Silver City. One day, miners struck a vein of white clay. Cyrus took two large clumps and molded them into portrait heads of a man and a woman. The likenesses so impressed local miners they were displayed at a nearby fair.

Among the spectators was Boston native C.H. Blanchard, who insisted Dallin pursue formal training. With help from mine executive Joab Lawrence, funds were raised to send Cyrus to Boston in April 1880.

Two years later, Dallin entered a competition to design a statue of Paul Revere for the city. He faced stiff competition – including famed sculptor Daniel Chester French, who would go on to create the Lincoln Memorial. Yet it was the 21-year-old unknown from Utah who emerged the winner. Bostonians dubbed him “Utah’s cowboy sculptor.” Others were more dismissive, criticizing his roots in what some Easterners saw as the controversial Mormon city of Salt Lake. Dallin pressed on.

Dallin opened his own studio and soon earned enough to study in Paris. There, in 1889, he encountered Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show – an experience that rekindled his connection to the American Indian subjects of his youth. Inspired, Dallin created “A Signal of Peace,” featuring a Native American chieftain on horseback, raising his lance skyward. Today, the statue stands in Lincoln Park, Chicago.

Dallin would go on to produce several celebrated equestrian statues including “The Medicine Man” in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park and “Appeal to the Great Spirit,” now in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Of “A Signal of Peace,” Dallin later said, “The origin of that statue goes back to my boyhood, to a day when I witnessed a peace pow-wow between the Indian chiefs and the United States Army officers.” His aim, he said, was to capture “the dignity typical of the Indian” as he had seen it firsthand.

Today, Dallin’s sculptures are found across the country – from “Sir Isaac Newton” at the Library of Congress to “Chief Joseph” at the New York Historical Society. But none may be more recognized
in Utah than his gilded statue of the Angel Moroni.

Ironically, Dallin nearly declined the commission. President Wilford Woodruff of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints asked Dallin to sculpt the figure for the Salt Lake Temple, but the artist – no longer a member of the Church and skeptical of angels – initially refused. It was his mother who convinced him otherwise.

She reminded him that whenever he returned home and embraced her, he called her his “angel mother.” She encouraged him to read the Book of Mormon and consider what the Angel Moroni symbolized.

In the end, Dallin accepted the commission. On April 6, 1892, he stood with 40,000 others as the statue – hammered copper covered in 22-karat gold leaf – was hoisted atop the temple’s eastern spire. Years later, he reflected on the experience: “My Angel Moroni brought me nearer to God than anything I ever did.”

Today, Dallin’s sculptures remain part of the public landscape in cities across the country – from “The Medicine Man” in Philadelphia to “Chief Joseph” in New York and “Paul Revere” in Boston. But it all began in Springville, where his early encounters with Native people and the raw materials of the land shaped a lifelong vision. Rooted in Utah, his work helped define how the American West would be remembered in bronze and stone. And while the Angel Moroni atop the Salt Lake Temple remains his most iconic, versions of the statue now rise from nearly 200 Church of Jesus Christ temples around the world.