author
Daniel W. (Daniel Webster) Jones
1830–1915
A frontiersman turned memoirist, he wrote from hard-won experience on the American West, Mormon settlement, and life among Native communities. His best-known book blends adventure, conversion, and borderland history in a vivid first-person voice.
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 became known as a Latter-day Saint pioneer, colonizer, translator, and author. He spent time in Mexico as a young man, learned Spanish, and later used that knowledge in religious and missionary work.
Jones played a leading role in the settlement that became Mesa, Arizona, and is also remembered for translating selections of the Book of Mormon into Spanish and helping lead an early Mormon expedition into Mexico. His life brought him into frequent contact with Native peoples of the American Southwest, experiences that strongly shaped his writing.
As an author, he is best remembered for Forty Years Among the Indians, an autobiographical work published in 1890. He died in 1915, leaving behind a life story tied closely to the expansion, conflict, and cultural encounters of the nineteenth-century American West.