Daniel W. (Daniel Webster) Jones

Born in Missouri on August 26, 1830, Daniel Webster Jones became an early member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and traveled west as part of the Mormon migration. Church history records place him among the 1850 pioneers and later among the 1856 handcart rescue efforts, showing how closely his life was tied to the settlement of the American frontier.

Jones is remembered as a pioneer leader and missionary whose work took him into frequent contact with Native peoples and into northern Mexico. He is also associated with early Latter-day Saint efforts in Arizona and Mexico, including work connected to the settlement that became Mesa, Arizona, and the first translation of selections from the Book of Mormon into Spanish.

As a writer, he left behind one of the more colorful memoirs of the period, Forty Years Among the Indians: A True Yet Thrilling Narrative of the Author's Experiences Among the Natives. He died in 1915, and his life story remains notable for blending faith, migration, conflict, diplomacy, and the rough realities of life in the nineteenth-century West.