He was constantly described in press coverage as the Pima Indian, the Indian Marine, the American Indian from the Arizona desert who had helped raise the flag.

His Akimel O’odham identity was used as a kind of flavor for the story — a bit of American color, a symbol of national unity that crossed racial lines.

But the actual content of that identity — the history of the Gila River people, the dispossession, the federal policies that had impoverished his community, the fact that he came from a place where the political and legal status of Native people was markedly unequal to that of white Americans — none of that was part of the story the bond tour wanted to tell.

Hayes reportedly told people who asked about his experience that the real heroes were the men who didn’t come home — men like Michael Strank and Franklin Sousley and Harlon Block.