THE TRIBE
Akimel Au-Authm, “river people” in their native tongue, lived in what is now the Phoenix Valley. Known more commonly now as the Pima Indians, in the early 1800’s they were a friendly, agrarian people who believed themselves to be the descendants of the Hohokam (“those who have gone”) who had lived in Arizona dating back to 300 B.C. Today the Akimel Au-Authm are part of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. More here.
The whites, as they moved west and discovered the Phoenix Valley, came upon the Akimel Au-Authm, and the natives had something the white man wanted. Water. As the Akimel Au-Authm were forced onto reservation land, their water was diverted to run along the western border of the reservation, but all on the white man’s side. It’s called “the ditch”. Cotton was planted, but only on the white man’s side. As the Akimel Au-Authm had perfected for hundreds of years, the water made the desert bloom, but only for the cash crops on the white man’s side, while the “Pima” struggled to sustain themselves with meager crops and little water.
THE MAN
Ira Hayes was born a full blooded “Pima” on January 12, 1923 in Sacaton, Arizona on the Gila River Indian Reservation. He died drunk and defeated on January 24, 1955. Most say his body was found lying in his own blood and vomit in the mud next to “the ditch”, though there are varying accounts. He is buried in Section 34 of Arlington National Cemetery.
You see, between his impoverished birth and ignominious death 32 years later, Ira Hayes became a Marine. Corporal Hayes completed Marine paratrooper training shortly before the Marines ended their paratrooper program. He earned the nickname Chief Falling Cloud. As a member of the Marines 2nd Battalion in World War II, he fought at the Battle of Vella Gulf, fought in the Bougainville Campaign and fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima. His citations include the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal (with four stars), the Navy Commendation Medal (with “V”), the Presidential Unit Citation (with one star) and the World War II Victory Medal. Of his company of 250 at Iwo Jima, only 27 escaped death or injury. Ira Hayes was one and found unwanted fame after the well known photo depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima Hill. The photo was staged.
Recalled from the Pacific, Ira Hayes was assigned to tour the United States with the Marine Band selling war bonds. His downfall followed as he was toasted and treated to drink after drink along the tour. By war’s end, Ira Hayes was a full blown alcoholic, arrested no fewer than 42 times on drunk and disorderly charges before his death.
But he had one more act of heroism and sobriety left. In 1951, Ira Hamilton Hayes sobered up and travelled to Washington D. C. where he asked government officials “Please set the Pima Indian free.” He was politely received…and promptly ignored.
It is said, though there is no official record, that Ira Hayes was offered a battlefield commission during the Pacific campaign which he declined, telling his commanding officer that he would rather die himself than order others to their deaths.
Call him drunken Ira Hayes; He won’t answer anymore; Not the whiskey drinkin’ Indian; Nor the Marine that went to war.
“The Ballad of Ira Hayes”
THE SONGWRITER
You probably never heard of him; few people have. Artist, poet and songwriter Peter LaFarge was the adopted son of a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. In his early days he worked as a rodeo rider and singer, eventually migrating to New York’s Greenwich Village in the late 1950’s. There he joined an emerging, and radical, folk music crowd that included Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and, later, a young Bob Dylan. LaFarge claimed Native American ancestry from the Narragansett Tribe, but his claim is widely disputed. He probably was informally “adopted” by the Tewa Tribe of New Mexico as an adolescent.
Whatever his actual ancestry, LaFarge was devoted to Native American causes. His Folkways albums were replete with Native American themes, with some blues, cowboy and love songs sprinkled in. It is no surprise then that he would be familiar with the story of Ira Hayes and would, in the early sixties, write the too honest and, because of its blunt honesty, controversial Ballad of Ira Hayes.
LaFarge was found dead at the height of his success in his New York City apartment on October 27, 1965 at the age of 34. The official cause of death was a stroke, though rumors persist that Peter LaFarge committed suicide by slitting his wrists in the shower. To his death, LaFarge refused to follow the folk culture into bands and electric instrumentation and insisted on maintaining his monotone vocals accompanied by a lone acoustic guitar.
Down the ditches for a thousand years ; The water grew Ira’s people’s crops; ‘Till the white man stole the water rights; And the sparklin’ water stopped.
Now Ira’s folks were hungry; And their land grew crops of weeds; When war came, Ira volunteered; And forgot the white man’s greed
THE TROUBADOR
Well regarded as a country western singer by the early sixties, Johnny Cash met Peter LaFarge in Nashville shortly after LaFarge had written The Ballad of Ira Hayes. Though a solid figure in the country genre, Cash, long interested in Native American right’s issues, took on the controversial song. The decision was not without pain. Many country DJ’s refused to air The Ballad of Ira Hayes because of its provocative and left leaning political message. The song reached number 3 on the charts anyway.
But Cash’s commitment was even stronger than the recording of Ira Hayes. As a secure country star, in the early sixties he took the professional risk of releasing his “Bitter Tears” album devoted to the cause of the Native American and containing six radical Peter LaFarge songs.
In 1971, Cash was invited to perform at the White House. The Nixon social office contacted him to request that he sing two conservative favorites of the president, Okie from Muskogee and Welfare Cadillac. Cash declined and instead inserted three left leaning political pieces (including The Ballad of Ira Hayes) into his performance. Cash claimed he didn’t know the songs the president wanted him to sing.
Then Ira started drinkin’ hard; Jail was often his home; They’d let him raise the flag and lower it; Like you’d throw a dog a bone! He died drunk one mornin’; Alone in the land he fought to save; Two inches of water in a lonely ditch; Was a grave for Ira Hayes”
Here is Johnny Cash’s version and another by Townes van Zandt that is less stylized and more in the tradition of Peter LaFarge.
WHY OLD STORIES MATTER
Some things change, and some things never do.
In the more than 300 years since the European tribe landed, the white man has taken the land and resources once enjoyed and nurtured by the native tribes of North America. We have diminished and often destroyed their cultures. We have abducted and raped their women, stolen their water, then sold them water back to the arid reservations where we confined them. We call them by anglicized names because we cannot make the effort to pronounce their tongue; they are “Pima” now, no longer Akimel Au-Authm. “Pima”, meaning “no”, is a grammatical misconstruction by a 19th century Christian missionary. When tribal reservations were found to have value, we moved them to new and more desolate land that we might mine the ore for ourselves. We deforested their sacred lands, destroying the habitat of the game upon which they fed.
Yes, old stories matter. Old-old stories that survive in the native lore of a forgotten tongue and new-old stories like that of Hayes and LaFarge and Cash. More than half a century has passed since Ira Hayes went to Washington to plead for his people, more than forty five years since The Ballad of Ira Hayes was written by Peter LaFarge and sung by Johnny Cash.
DID YOU KNOW
• Native American tribes are still considered “dependent nations”. That’s a throwback to British colonial rule, a separate nation but subservient to the laws of a superior nation.
• Native American status is the equivalent of being wards of the government. For example, the federal government can take control of Native American litigation, including dismissing claims against States that the Native Americans were prosecuting. The most recent such case was during the Bush II administration.
• Treaty provisions with Native American tribes can be abrogated by a simple act of Congress without the consent of the tribe.
• Congress has the authority, by simple legislation, to “terminate” tribes.
• Most reservation land is not titled to the tribal nation; it is titled to the federal government.
• States and local governments continue to try to deny Native Americans the right to vote. More than 70 voting rights cases for Native Americans have been filed since passage of the Voting Rights Act.
• In the western states, which distribute water by the appropriation method, Native American water rights are deemed to have arisen after that of white settlers, giving whites first priority. The illogic of the legal reasoning is that natives used the water, but never “appropriated” specific flows or amounts.
Some good news: In August of 2008, 149 years after being pressed into reservation status, and after a 34 year court battle that began in 1974, the “Pima” finally got water rights, though only about forty percent of what they sought. In the meantime, having been forced to abandon their traditional agrarian lifestyle and to eat white man’s food, they developed one of the highest diabetes rates in the world, more than 50% of all adults. They responded by volunteering for medical/scientific studies to help find a cure for all those with Type 2 Diabetes.
Ira Hayes and Peter LaFarge and Johnny Cash are all dead now. The Ballad of Ira Hayes still gets played from time to time on the oldies stations. The Akimel Au-Authm, river people, still live on the reservation, more affluent now, in Anglo terms, from the proceeds of their casinos and land leased to developers.
And, the cotton still grows, but now, finally, on the River People’s side of the ditch.
Contributor, aka tidbits. Retired attorney in complex litigation, death penalty defense and constitutional law. Former Nat’l Board Chair: Alzheimer’s Association. Served on multiple political campaigns, including two for U.S. Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR). Contributing author to three legal books and multiple legal publications.