author
Daniel W. (Daniel Webster) Jones
1830–1915
A frontier memoirist with a knack for vivid storytelling, this Mormon pioneer wrote from hard experience on the American West, Native communities, and the early Latter-day Saint movement. His best-known work, Forty Years Among the Indians, blends adventure, travel, and personal history.
1 Audiobook
Forty Years Among the Indians A true yet thrilling narrative of the author's experiences among the natives
by Daniel W. (Daniel Webster) Jones
About the author
Born in Missouri in 1830, Daniel Webster Jones lived through some of the roughest corners of the 19th-century American frontier. As a young man he served during the Mexican–American War, later joined the Latter-day Saints, and became known as a pioneer, colonizer, and missionary in the American Southwest and northern Mexico.
Jones is closely tied to the settlement of what became Mesa, Arizona, and he also played an important role in early Latter-day Saint outreach to Spanish speakers. Sources credit him with producing the first translation of selections from the Book of Mormon into Spanish and helping lead one of the first Mormon missionary efforts into Mexico.
As an author, he is remembered chiefly for Forty Years Among the Indians, an autobiographical narrative published in 1890. The book draws on decades of travel and contact in the West and remains the work most associated with his name.