APACHE TEARS

BY: H. R. Moore

He was an intensely practical man, good humored and friendly, but strictly a no-nonsense fellow. In his powerful hands, granite-muscled from a lifetime of mine labor, he held a pound or so of obsidian nodules. They were peanut to walnut size, irregular in shape, apparently black though actually translucent, and mottled with clinging white perlite. "The Injuns say the mountain cried, and these are the tears it shed," he said, and he laughed, letting the stones sift through his fingers and fall back into a tengallon can at his feet filled with more of the glassy pebbles.

Nearby a perlite crusher rumbled complacently, busy at its work of transforming gray rock into a dust valuable in industry. Behind him, less than two miles away, the mountain of which he spoke looked down impassively.

As is the habit of mountains it remained aloofly silent, but it seemed to shimmer impatiently in the April sun.

White men are ever laughing at the tale of the mountain that cried. But they are quick enough to scramble for the tears. Men cut them and polish them and fashion them into jewelry to adorn both their women and themselves. They ship them to other states, and even to other nations. And proudly they give them the name Apache Tears.

These Apache Tears are something of a mystery to the white men. None of them is just exactly sure how they came into being. Learned men have studied the tears and offered theories as to how they were created. But other learned men have offered different theories, and few are brash enough to insist that one idea is absolutely right, and the other absolutely wrong.

Indian legend tells us plainly enough how they came to be there. The mountain cried, and the tears solidified into smoky glass and remained solidified forever more.

Details of the legend of the mountain that wept have been clouded with time and repetition until now the story is as hazy as the obsidian tears it commemorates. But, also like the tears, the simple beauty of the story lies below the surface of confused details for all to see.

At the head of the main street in the town of Superior, Arizona, a granite mountain climbs from low foothills to sudden dramatic vertical etching against desert sky. The sheer cliffs, culminating in jagged boulders and clawing cactus, has been named Apache Leap.

Legend tells us that many years ago, before the time of the oldest Indian now living, a party of Apache warriors was surprised by a superior enemy force. Some say the enemies were Indians of another tribe, others say they were a band of Spaniards seeking slaves for their mines. Whoever they were they pursued the Apaches to the top of the mountain. The fleeing Indians fought valiantly, but soon their arrows were gone and capture was imminent.

Apache Tears are found in beds of perlite, and perlite, geologists say, is made of a certain kind of lava that burst out of the earth and cooled very rapidly. Sometimes when lava comes to the surface and cools rapidly it forms obsidian, sometimes pumice, sometimes perlite, sometimes other material. This is determined by water content, rate of cooling, and other factors working at the time the magma, or molten rock, comes to the surface.

Just how the Apache Tears, or obsidian nodules, came to exist in the perlite is not as clearly understood. Some geologists have ventured the theory that rain falling at the time the perlite was still molten cooled bits of it even more rapidly than the main mass and pebbles of obsidian resulted.

Another theory is that obsidian was formed originally and that it deteriorated into perlite, leaving the glassy Capture meant torture and death at worst, a lifetime of slavery at best. The defeated warriors had only one other choice open to them. As a single mind they made their choice and each leaped over the cliff to death on the rocks below.

So grief-stricken was the mountain that it shed torrents of tears, and the tears hardened into glass.

Or another story will tell you that an Apache maiden, betrothed to one of the warriors, wept from a broken heart, and it is her tears which we find in the ground today. Little matter, though, how the story changes with each telling. The tears are there in the ground for anyone to see.

Science, of course, tells us still another story. The cores scattered in the main bed.

Perlite occurs in scattered places in Arizona and throughout the western states wherever comparatively recent-speaking on the geologic time scale-volcanic action occurred. Some perlite beds contain the smoky obsidian pebbles, some do not. Russia has perlite deposits, too, and the obsidian nodules are known there. Conceivably they could be known as Bolshevik Tears over there.

The perlite itself is mined in this country, usually in open pit operations, is crushed and then expanded by heating. The chemically combined water in perlite causes it to explode like popcorn when heated, and to expand to as much as twenty times its original volume. The expanded perlite is used for a variety of things, from gardening to insulation purposes.

The perlite beds near Superior are extensive. Reagan Williams, who mines perlite and crushes it in the shadow of Apache Leap, estimates the perlite deposit he works to be two miles wide and fifteen miles long and up to a hundred feet deep. A mighty volcanic river frozen in space and time.

Each year now people numbering in the thousands visit this ancient, motionless river and chip and poke among its fringes, finding for themselves the smoky tear drops. There seems to be a satisfaction derived from picking the stones out of the ground that just cannot be equaled by purchasing any amount of them at a rock shop.

For a number of years the "rockpickers" as the gem seekers are sometimes ingloriously called, were something of a pest. They swarmed over private property, destroyed fences, clogged roads with their auto caravans and generally wreaked havoc in the vicinity of the perlite mines. After a time Reagan Williams, the perlite miner near Superior, decided to quit making them try to beat him and let them join him. He opened his mine to rock hounds, and for a nominal fee allowed them to pick up Apache Tears by the bucketful.

Then, on good tourist days, as many as a hundred people might swarm into the mining area. "It got so we couldn't work," Williams says. "We couldn't even operate the loader, let alone blast. There were people everywhere."

The solution to that problem may seem obvious in hindsight, but at the time it was conceived, less than three years ago, it was an inspiration. A special area, far enough removed from the mine to be completely safe, was set aside specifically for tourist use. Reagan's men moved in with dozers, and scraped away top soil and with blasting powder and earth moving machinery opened up a portion of the perlite deposit where rock hounds could help themselves.

Success of the venture can be gauged by counting the number of cars that visit the tear pits, as they are called, throughout the year. A record day brought over 130 people to search for tears. The winter season is most popular, as poking about in light-and-heat-reflecting perlite can be hot work. During the height of the winter season cars come from all over the country, converge on the pits, and tears are hauled out by the uncounted ton.

A competitor promptly opened another pit near the one Williams started, and now two different operators share the tourist trade. Something of a "war" goes on between the two, but it is a war only of signs with brilliantly painted, plentiful and easily followed signs directing all seekers to the two different pits. A small fee is charged for permission to pick up tears at each place. One place charges 25 cents and allows each person five pounds of tears (that is a sizeable bagful), and the other charges 50 cents per hour and allows unlimited poundage. Probably neither operator is getting rich, but the tourists certainly get their money's worth.

Those who want to buy Apache Tears in quantity are directed to the perlite crusher, where any amount may be taken away for 15 cents per pound. (A little less if you want a ton or more.) The report has often been circulated that the tears are screened out of the perlite at the crusher. Just how this story began is not known, but it is not true. It would be practically impossible to do so and is unnecessary as well. Such tears as go to the crusher are ground up along with the perlite. Both tears and perlite are of the same composition, though the obsidian tears do contain somewhat less chemically combined water than the perlite.

The tears available at the crusher have been picked by hand out of the perlite that comes to the crusher and also at the mine itself. A friendly old gentleman, a pensioner, works at the mine picking up loose tears. He ekes out his income by receiving a set amount of money per pound for the tears he gathers. Sometimes specially authorized groups, such as Boy Scouts seeking a way to earn money, pick up tears and they are paid by the pound for their findings.

Rock shops often buy tears by the hundred pound lots, and often tourists carry the mystery gems back totheir home states in quantity. Exporters occasionally ship them by the ton to countries overseas where they are popular, as they are in this country, when polished and set in jewelry.

The tears themselves are neither rare nor especially common. They can be found for sale in rock shops and even in restaurants and gas stations throughout the state. Prices may range as high as 25 cents apiece when they are sold far from the source. There are also Apache Tear fields in Arizona other than those at Superior. One extensive field is located near the town of Aguila, but nowhere are they as easy to pick up as in the supervised pits near Superior.

In these commercial pits the owners take pains to see that the tears are easy to come by. They blast regularly once a week, and frequently stir the loose perlite with earth moving machines to make pickings easier.

The town of Superior is on U.S. Highways 60-70, east and slightly south of Phoenix. The drive takes approximately two hours from Phoenix, and the highway is excellent all the way. Just outside of town, approaching from the west, or Phoenix, large, easy to see signs show the way to the tear pits. Once off the highway there remains a drive of approximately half a mile to the pits themselves over a desert road that is kept in fairly good condition. The road crosses a wash one time, and during periods of heavy rains the wash could be flooded, making crossing dangerous or even impossible. This, however, will be only on rare occasions.

Once at the pits finding the tears is largely a matter of patience, with little or no hard work involved. But they are not entirely easy to see, and sometimes the best method is just to stand still and stare at one spot.

Some say the mountain is still weeping softly, and that new tears will appear before your eyes. Who knows? It is true enough that those who will listen can hear the windy sigh of the mountain now and again. And those who look will find tears where they saw nothing just moments before; at least, so says the undying legend.