The point is, they are willing to share

A MIRAGE, MAYBE? WE’RE HEADED BY CAR TO THE END of a smooth, wriggling blacktop road in a desert full of jagged edges, sharp needles and heavy sand. We rumble through the Coachella Valley, trailing clouds of dust, climb to a ridge, then step down between sun-blasted hillocks into a scene to startle and gladden any thirsty wanderer: Palm Canyon, gloriously moist, teeming with about 3,000 fan palms along a trickling creek.

This is the largest natural palm oasis in North America. Yet at the moment, as we scoot under its shade, that’s not what amazes me. What amazes me is that after three centuries of land-grabbing by latecomers, a decade of major cash flow on the local reservation and months of gubernatorial pressure on tribes to hand over more of their casino revenues, Palm Canyon still belongs to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, and the Agua Caliente still let the rest of us hike in it.

Sure, they charge us $6 a head. But they let us in. Not only to Palm Canyon, but also its shorter neighbors Andreas and Murray canyons. And, for $12.50 per adult, we can take a guided tour of once-forbidden Tahquitz Canyon a few miles away. Add the canyons up, and the Agua Caliente this year will receive about 150,000 day hikers (including some equestrians).

We start by nibbling on the first few hundred cool, picnic-friendly yards of the 15-mile Palm Canyon Trail. Some hikers head off to sample the other canyons, none of which is more than a mile deep. But we stick with Palm Canyon for three miles, climbing from shadow into the warm, dry open.

All the usual stagecraft of a groomed trail is reversed: You begin with the scenic payoff, then huff and puff your way out to land that’s not quite postcard-ready but still peppered with backlighted cholla, scampering rabbits and sliced rocks hinting at seismic history. Desert context.

Now let’s widen the angle a little more. There are more than 100 reservations in California, amounting to something like 800 square miles -- about half of 1% of the land that these tribes had to themselves 250 years ago. Yes, the Indians’ acres these days hold more than 50 casinos and billions in annual revenues, but does that mean Native California owes some debt to Gov. Schwarzenegger as he scavenges for budget-balancing dollars?

Say you’re Native American, living with a post-missionary legacy of lost land, forced relocations and busted treaties. Now you’re affluent at last, with court-confirmed sovereignty and a deal with the governor specifying what your casino can do and what you owe the state. Then the state runs short of money, and somebody starts muttering about renegotiating. I’d be looking to hit somebody over the head with a history book.

The casino tribe leaders seem to be taking this in stride, focusing on concessions they might get from the state in return. But maybe, given all this history, it’s no surprise that there are so few California tribes with scenic territory, trails and the inclination to share.

Of 105 accessible sites listed in Nancy Salcedo’s 1999 book, “A Hiker’s Guide to California Native Places,” from trails to rock-art spots, only the canyons at Palm Springs lie on land still owned by Indians.

At the Viejas reservation in San Diego County, leaders did cosponsor a Feb. 13-14 conference on environmentalism with speakers including author Peter Matthiessen and poet Gary Snyder. The La Jolla Reservation in northeastern San Diego County does have campsites. And beyond California, plenty of reservations offer camping or hiking or hunting and fishing.

But on California tribal land, once you’ve left the casino, there’s usually not much for you beyond such features as Pechanga’s 522 hotel rooms or Cabazon’s recycling works, or Sycuan’s golf course and tennis courts.

So in more ways than one, these canyons are uncommon territory.

Tom Davis, chief planning officer for the tribe, estimates that the canyon areas amount to 17,000 of the Agua Calientes’ 32,000 acres. The Agua Caliente leaders run two casinos, a spa and a hotel. But canyon visits predate most of the other tourist ventures.

Since the 1920s, the tribe has been doing business with hikers and occasionally facing nasty problems. In 1969, after hippies took up residence in Tahquitz Canyon, the tribe cleared and closed the area. Thirty-two years later, the tribe finished hauling trash out of the canyon, built a visitor center and reopened for escorted visitors, up to 100 per day. The Agua Caliente band’s membership, meanwhile, adds up to about 400.

“They know you can’t hold this back just for yourself, something this wonderful,” says tribal ranger supervisor Chris Fritsche.

Fritsche, 32, came to the canyon four years ago from a state prison guard job -- “I wasn’t enjoying the prison life, I guess you could say” -- and, on a typical day, he’s one of four rangers here. They must be doing something right: Scanning the trail for trash, we see only a single heart-shaped Mylar balloon (it’s Valentine’s Day, after all), and almost no graffiti.

For the three-mile return journey, we loop back via East Fork Trail. Soon it’s 4 o’clock and we’re pacing through a dry creekbed, the desert cooling fast, the 60-foot palms jutting back into view at last.

These palms, the rangers tell me, are nothing like most trees. They’re monocot angiosperms -- something like tall blades of grass, growing without bark or rings to disclose their age. And this particular kind, the desert fan palm is the only species native to the North American West. Most of those other palms you see in a day of Southern California city living -- the date, the king, the Mexican blue -- are from immigrant stock, like most of us. So these days, the tribe and its trees are both surrounded by carpetbaggers.

And now it’s time to head back out that wriggling road that leads to the rest of the world and all its arguments over who owes whom. But before we leave this oasis behind, let me take a moment under an especially fetching monocot angiosperm to offer a word to our hosts: Thanks.

To e-mail Christopher Reynolds or to read his previous Wild West columns, go to latimes.com/chrisreynolds.