Dedication

and background

This work is dedicated to the oft overlooked Native Moapa bands of Paiutes - the first people to use and know this Palm, - to the memory of Chick Perkins from whom I learned much and from whom I acquired my first palm tree (even though it was a date palm), - to Mendis Diego Cooper for being the first white man in Overton to plant Palms around his homestead,- to Orville Perkins whose compassionate and timeless story introduced me to Peg Leg Joe,

and most of all -to Peg Leg Joe who I am convinced has stood at my shoulder during much of the last three years.

I hope that he especially, may smile.

Although this work on paper only began exactly three years ago early in 1994, the real story actually begins about 20 years ago. (from December 1996)

It was then, near Christmas time, that a romance with the desert began a long sojourn into a special part of my soul. In those days the stark unpretentious deserts of Southern Nevada could overcome and even terrify me. I was from an area of RAIN where few people use garden hoses for anything except to wash their cars and ditches there are used to get water 'off' your property, rather than 'onto' it.

I had come to the Valley with a purpose. I intended to try a 'fast' following much prompting by a friend named Dwight, for whom 'fasting ' had often presaged special insights. In those days that was something I coveted. Using my camper as a base I began my 'fast' far to the north in Gunnison Utah but found that location far too cold to go without food. Remembering that Dwight had spent several 'fasts' in the Valley of Fire near Overton, I made my way there hoping for some warmer weather and some kind of 'breakthrough' in my modern version of a vision quest.

No sooner had the deserts of the Great Basin been interrupted by the green fields of the lower Moapa valley, when I found myself once again leaving that miniature paradise for the eerie and 'phantom-like' red gargantuan rocks of the Valley of Fire. It was there that I parked my Pickup in a vacant space below Atl Atl rock scratched with unintelligible ancient glyphs . I attempted to clear my thoughts, to write them down and to get my mind off of food.

After what seemed an excruciatingly long, cold and frustrating week and a half, I did at last, come to two very profound realizations:

The first was that I this 'fasting' thing was not working because I constantly thought only of food. The second was that at some point in my trip nearly all of my cash had been stolen ...apparently while at a gas station in Utah. Between this and an expensive mechanical breakdown on my truck I was effectively stranded.

Far from being 'warm' and enlightening, this desert, which had been the source of such inspiration to my friend Dwight seemed to only shrug it's aged and weathered rocky shoulders indifferently and coldly at me.

Tired, ravenous, and irritated about the outcome of my 'vision quest', I wryly headed straight to the only bank in Overton and made an arrangement through a nice lady there to get a wire so that I could return to "Christmas" in Missouri. She reminded me somewhat of my own mother. She and my mother it seems, also shared an identical maiden name.

Joyce Jones (Perkins) was to be one of the first people I would meet in the valley. She was the first of the Perkins clan I would meet as well. Eventually I met Chick and others but since everything has an order... I just wanted to point out that it was her father who wrote the timeless and simple book: Hookey Beans and Willows, which introduced me to Peg Leg Joe. Today, I can't help but ponder at the appropriateness of it all.

There in the shadow of Atl Atl the mysterious glyphs of an ancient people looked down on me and perhaps even forecasted this part of the future as I fantasized about food and perhaps Peg Leg Joe smiled to himself. Perhaps he hoped to get himself a word in edgewise. It is possible that he eventually did.

Peg Leg Joe, was a Moapa Paiute Historian early in this century. According to Orville Perkins, he had lost a leg and therefore was never married, instead becoming a priceless repository for all the memories of the history of the Moapa Paiute people.

In olden times this was something that had to be handed down to specially chosen Moapa children who would then spend many years learning the ancient history songs. He had said that His history recital was three full days and nights of continuous stories. He needed desperately to hand it down to someone or else he knew that it would die forever with him. He knew that he was growing old and he had found no one to take his place. There simply was no one to learn the ancient recitals. In vain, He tried many times to get a young Moapa to learn the stories...but every time he would start, the government would sweep the young one away and send them to a far away school leaving him again without anyone to carry on the teachings. He was desperate. It was in this despair that he at last turned to the whites for help.

..."He realized more than any person in the world that he had something very valuable. At last he turned to a white for help. This man who had never learned to read or write and had traveled scarcely a hundred miles in all his life, needed help...He reasoned:"

...if only a white man could write only a small part of his story...

Although there was a little interest...it came too late.

Peg Leg Joe passed on to the spirit world before he could tell his story.

This was the story of Peg Leg Joe...all that we knew of it anyway...

It is an amazing place of persistence and survival. It is a place of great endurance and profound defeat as well as of quiet strength and tenacity.

Even the soil here... which looks burnt and dead, is alive. It is here of all places that I understood why the ancient Americans knew that everything had life. Here the rocks speak even without the petroglyphs. Everything... is alive!

My relating of the story has nothing of the romance and appeal that I'm sure Peg Leg Joe would have shared with us. There is nothing in this vastly expurgated version to suggest the poetry of the original. I am not even at all sure this contains anything he would have said anyway. This is not like the history stories of the Cahuilla Indians of Palm Springs. It is not a richly embroidered tapestry of legend and lore.

It is only an urgent and impassioned reminder that this kind of tapestry once existed and an admonition not to overlook and forget that fact...ever!

I have only attempted to acknowledge and preserve the object of only one part of a much forgotten Moapa legacy. Short of a return from the grave, even Peg Leg Joe cannot bring that back. I have not tried to take his place...Rather, this is only an argument which makes a case for allowing this one ancient part of the past to persist where it apparently always has. Nothing more. We do have some memories of living Moapa elders however...and these have literally been scooped up in our aprons ...luckily before the last of this priceless effervescent harvest subsides forever. These are the only people on earth who still remember ...who were actual eyewitnesses to some of the ancient ways. Some of these ways here have apparently never before been recorded ...even by ethnographers. If they had, then surely others would have come forward by now to save these palms from the destructive claims of those who would like to see it vanish from the region's natural areas.

This history speaks through the people of this valley... some newcomers ...and some very ancient. These people have always been interested that the history of the Valley does not die. Everyone's side to the story is important and has a valid place here. This history was told before I ever came to it. Many did not hear it. I only write it for those who have been too busy... or in some other way, they overlooked it.

Perhaps this sums up what I am trying to say best:

"...In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught. " -Baba Dioum

-Spencer, Winton  - December 1996

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