Daniel Webster Jones: He Volunteered to Winter at Devil's Gate to Guard the Handcart Survivors' Possessions — And Almost Starved

Daniel Webster Jones (August 26, 1830 – April 20, 1915) was orphaned at age 12, fought in the Mexican-American War at 17, learned Spanish in Mexico, and was converted to the Church after his pistol accidentally discharged into his own groin and thigh near the Green River in 1850 — leaving him lame and dependent on a Mormon settlement in Provo. He was baptized by Isaac Morley in 1851.

In October 1856, he joined the rescue party from Salt Lake City and became one of the three express riders — with Joseph Young and Abel Garr — who found the Martin Company on October 28 at Red Bluff. He recorded the scene in vivid detail: 'There were old men pulling their carts, sometimes loaded with a sick wife or children — women pulling sick husbands — little children six to eight years old struggling through mud and snow. As night came on, the mud would freeze on their clothes and feet... hundreds needing help. What could we do?'

After the Martin Company was moved to Martin's Cove, it was determined that someone had to stay at Devil's Gate to guard the goods cached at Fort Seminoe. Jones, Thomas Alexander, and Ben Hampton — along with 17 teamsters from the Hunt and Hodgett companies — volunteered to winter there. It was an act of extraordinary sacrifice: they ate rawhide and ox pelts to survive. Some men nearly starved to death. Jones later wrote that the experience was the lowest point of his life physically but that his faith never wavered.

After the handcart rescue, Jones went on to remarkable achievements: he led the first Mormon missionary expedition into Mexico, made the first translation of selections of the Book of Mormon into Spanish, led the colonization of what became Mesa, Arizona, and wrote the autobiography *Forty Years Among the Indians* — one of the primary documents of the 1856 rescue. His granddaughter was film actress Fay Wray.