What is documented: Hayes had been drinking at a card game in the Sacaton Flats area of the reservation.

He was found dead the following morning, outside, face down.

The official cause of death listed on his death certificate was exposure and alcohol poisoning.

He was on the Gila River Indian Reservation, the land he had come from and to which he had returned so many times.

He was thirty-two years old.

By comparison, Rene Gagnon died at fifty-four.

John Bradley died at seventy.