jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

I think of myself as a decent amateur programmer.  I have done a good bit in php and perl.  My experience is that whenever I venture into some other language I end up having frustrating problems that others have had also.

In looking through the posts on this forum, I see lots of help and lots of repeating questions from newbies like me.  Sorry.

I want to access userdata and put it in a <div>.  Right now I just want to get the data into an alert.

I am using xml to feed the data and the relevant portion (I think) looks like this:

<rows>
<page/>
<total>5</total>
<records>49</records>
<userdata name="index">15.0</userdata>
−
<row id="108">
<cell>10/01/08</cell>
<cell>91</cell>
<cell>67.6</cell>
<cell>111</cell>
<cell>23.8</cell>
<cell>Capitol Hill--The Senator</cell>
<cell>White</cell>
<cell/>
</row>

With the row information repeating

In my grid I have this:

var hi = $('#list').getGridParam('userData'); alert(hi.index);

The alert pops when the page is loaded and contains "undefined" and nothing else.

firebug reports:

$t is undefined

(function($){$.jgrid=$.jgrid||{};$.exten...urn}return c.p.userData[b]}})})(jQuery);

I have looked at the docs here:

http://www.secondpersonplural.ca/jqgriddocs/_2ej16ksnu.htm

And earlier messages on this forum (including the earlier  userdata: once again thread)

I am not sure if the xml and javascript shoud be userdata or userData or even if the capitlazation matters.  Maybe the:

var hi = $('#list').getGridParam('userData'); alert(hi.index);

needs to be defined as a function itself.

Help please.

Bill