Forty Years Among the Indians: A True Yet Thrilling Narrative of the Author's Experiences Among the Natives
1890
Forty Years Among the Indians: A True Yet Thrilling Narrative of the Author's Experiences Among the Natives
1890
Forty Years Among the Indians is an extraordinary memoir that defies easy categorization. Part adventure narrative, part spiritual testimony, part ethnographic record, Daniel W. Jones's account chronicles one man's transformation across four decades of frontier life. Arriving in the West as a young volunteer in the Mexican-American War, Jones carries the prejudices of his era. Then comes the Comanche attack that nearly kills him, and the subsequent years in Mexico where he confronts his own reckless nature. What unfolds is something unexpected: a Mormon settler's evolution from fear and misunderstanding toward genuine connection with the peoples he once regarded as savages. Jones served Brigham Young on missions that remained secret for years, rode with outlaws, survived where others perished, and walked into Old Mexico when such journeys meant almost certain death. This is not the sanitized frontier mythology of later dime novels but a raw, first-person document from a man who actually lived among the tribes for forty years. The voice is sometimes contradictory, always surprising, and offers a window into a vanished world that refuses easy moral categorization.
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“It was not long until it became manifest that I would have to either give up the Indians or lose my standing with the white brethren. I chose the natives.””
— Daniel W. Jones
“I was now so exhausted and sleepy that I could scarcely keep awake, although it was mid-day. So I told the Indians I was tired and would lie down and go to sleep, and if they were determined to kill me to wait till I was asleep, then put their guns close to my head, so I would not suffer much, telling them I as their friend. I spread my blankets on the ground, laid down and I am sure it was no more than two minutes till I was sound asleep.””
— Daniel W. Jones
“I told them I did not intend to try to prove my innocence, but would help him prove my guilt if possible, for if guilty I wanted to ind it out and quit it.””
— Daniel W. Jones
“The spirit of the whites was really devilish; they seemed determined to drive the Indians to the wall, not one had spoken a word in their behalf. . . I told the whites that they demanded of the natives, what none of them could do; that if they were required to make all their wrongs right that they had committed for the last two years, it would bankrupt them morally and financially. . . I referred to the virtue and honesty of the Pimas when the whites first came among them, showing that all their vile degradation and dishonesty was copied from the white man. Also, that many now present were corrupt and immoral, much more so than the average Indian.””
— Daniel W. Jones
“I counseled with those who presided over me, and though the advice I received was contrary to my ideas of justice and right, I followed it, though it was at the complete sacrifice of my home acquired by years of toil and hardship. I was determined to retain my standing in the Church at any cost, and leave judgment with the Lord, who will eventually deal out strict justice to all men.””
— Daniel W. Jones
“I took no part in the ceremony. Many declared we were angels from heaven. I told them I thought we were better than angels for this occasion, as we were good strong men come to help them into the valley . . . " p. 45””
— Daniel W. Jones
