Hehe, it's counter-intuitive but I'd be inclined to learn about the bones later on in the piece. The logic being, that everything must be modelled, but not everything's animated (not to mention the complexity of joints is perhaps not the best place to cut one's teeth with maya.

The tutes here are very good, 'Specially the ones done by Mike or Kurt or Kevin.

The very first tute I did that wasn't include with maya was the tennis ball tute done by Christer, found at Christer B's page,
it takes Christer about 5 minutes to model it, so it's not too taxing to repeat a number of times.

Following that, the cartoon dog was a good progression.
I found that by doing the poly-only tute first that you could really appreciate just how good nurbs and subds are.

The cartoon guy is another good one too, being newer than some, the codecs have sqeezed it a little more than some of the older tutes, so it downloads a bit quicker.

Also, the Joan of Arc tutorial that's around somewhere is really good. It's pages ad pages and pages long, working from concept art right up to a fully rigged and textured character. - Polygon modelling.

enjoy,

Simon