Cash contacted Ira Hayes’ mother and then visited her and her family at the Pima reservation in Arizona.
Before Cash left the Pima Reservation, Hayes’ mother presented him with a gift, a smooth black translucent stone. The
Pima call it an “Apache tear.” The legend behind the opaque volcanic black glass is rooted in the last U.S. cavalry attack
on Native people, which took place on Apaches in the state of Arizona. After the slaughter, the soldiers refused to allow
the Apache women to put the dead up on stilts, a sacred Apache tradition. Legend says that overcome by intense
grief, Apache women shed tears for the first time ever, and the tears that fell to the earth turned black. Cash, moved by
the gift, polished the stone and mounted it on a gold chain.

With the Apache tear draped around his neck, Cash cut his protest album. He recorded five of La Farge’s songs, two of his
own, and one he’d co-written with Johnny Horton. All were Native American themed. “When we went back into the studio
to record what became ‘Bitter Tears,’” Cash bassist Marshall Grant says, “we could see that John really had a special feeling
for this record and these songs.”

Yet the album’s first single, “Ira Hayes,” went nowhere. Few radio stations would play the song. Was the length of the song,
four minutes and seven seconds, the problem? Radio stations liked three-minute tracks. Or maybe disc jockeys wanted
Cash to “entertain, not educate,” as one Columbia exec put it.

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