Robert Scriver
1914 - 1999
Updated: March 3, 2026
Robert Macfie Scriver was a Montana sculptor who became famous for his detailed bronze statues of cowboys, Native Americans, rodeo riders, and wildlife of the northern plains.
Robert Scriver was born on August 15, 1914, in Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, where his parents ran the Browning Mercantile Company. As a young man he studied music and worked as a band teacher, then opened a taxidermy shop in Browning, which helped him learn animal anatomy and later made his sculptures of elk, deer, bears, and other wildlife very lifelike. In his 40s he turned seriously to sculpture, building his own bronze-casting foundry and creating well-known pieces such as "No More Buffalo," "An Honest Try," and heroic monuments of the Blackfeet people, Charles M. Russell, Lewis and Clark, and rodeo champions. Because he spent his life in Blackfeet country and worked closely with tribal members, many people call him "the Cowboy's National Sculptor" and a major storyteller of Western and Blackfeet history in bronze. Scriver died in 1999, and his bronzes and taxidermy are now in museums and collections across Montana and the United States.