JEWEL BABB is an eighty-year-old Anglo woman who was born in South Texas and has lived in the Texas- Mexico border area all her life. When I first heard of her, she was living in the desert approximately thirty miles from Sierra Blanca and six miles from the Rio Grande. Her name was gradually becoming known in El Paso, where I was living at the time, primarily by a large community of the Anglo counterculture who live in the upper Rio Grande valley on the Texas-New Mexico boundary line. Many of this community are interested in natural healing, herbs, and psychic phenomena. According to one story, Jewel Babb had first been discovered by Greg T., a member of the community, who had been scouting the lower Rio Grande area for peyote buttons, which, at one time, grew abundantly in the neighborhood. In the middle of the desert, he discovered her cabin and knocked on the door for water. She asked him what he was doing so far from the highway, and he answered truthfully that he was looking for peyote. "Peyote," he quotes her as saying, "will give you nothing but trouble. But I can show you some things that'll do you some good."

Since that time, the counterculture people have gone to her from El Paso in increasing numbers, not only to be cured themselves of various maladies but also to be taught her methods of using hot springs, massage, and natural healing techniques. Mrs. Babb moved from her isolated desert cabin in 1977 to a house in Valentine, Texas, which has made her more accessible to visitors. In addition to the counterculture people, Mrs. Babb is known also in the border Mexican American community and across the river in the Mexican villages. There are also many people scattered throughout the United States who came to know her during an eight-year period several years ago when she owned Indian Hot Springs, a hotel and health spa on the Rio Grande approximately eighty miles downriver from El Paso.

This book represents Mrs. Babb's life story and her views on her healing powers in her own words. The account which emerges of her developing consciousness as a faith healer is an exciting one, not only because of the insight it can provide on healers in general but also because of the model it presents of a strong, individualistic woman coming into her own powers without benefit of the support either husband or community would usually provide.

A great deal of the material in this book was transcribed orally during a three-month period when I stayed with Mrs. Babb at her Valentine home. However, Mrs. Babb also wrote long segments of the story in long hand. Her voice is weak, and she is somewhat reticent about speaking directly about herself. Thus, after long talking sessions would wear her out, she would turn to writing. We would then go over the written sections together, so that she could supplement orally in places which seemed to need elucidation. She also continued to send me additional segments whenever she would recall some incident which seemed to her to be of value in the story. I have tried to edit her writing as little as possible, other than to arrange the spoken and written segments in orderly sequence, editing no more than was absolutely necessary in order to preserve the enjoyable way of telling which is Mrs. Babb's unique "voice".

In addition to her story, I have included my own impressions of the time I spent with her and of the environment which, in my opinion, has contributed to the formation of her personality and beliefs. These personal notes have been provided so that historical and descriptive material which would provide a context for her story could be supplied and so that some idea of the circumstances under which the interviewing was done would be supplied to enable the readers to judge for themselves how these circumstances might have influenced Mrs. Babb in shaping her story. Mrs. Babb and I consider this to be a joint writing project, and we have worked equally hard in putting together a manuscript which we hope will be both informative and enjoyable. We wish to thank personally the Department of English at the University of Utah and, in particular, Dr. Hal Moore for their support in allowing me the time to pursue this project; Dr. Jan Brunvand for his encouragement; the National Endowment of the Arts for a writer's grant which allowed me time to assemble the manuscript; Dr. Elton Miles and Joe Graham of Sul Ross University for allowing me access to their files of information; Mr. and Mrs. Dogie Wright of Sierra Blanca, Texas, for the use of their personal library and for their recollections of Indian Hot Springs; Mrs. Dee Elliott for the H. L. Hunt information; W. D. Smithers for his assistance in locating material on railroad tie house construction; and Eleanor Taylor, Susie Manning, Bill Liles, and Chuck Taylor for their continuing support of this project through long drives, desert heat, and dusty roads.

Pat Little Dog

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Pat Little Dog c/o University of Texas Press,
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