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Indiana Authors and their books, 1816-1980.
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page: 217[View Page: 217]

MILLER, CINCINNATUS HINER (JOAQUIN): 1838-1913.

Although his residence in the state was brief, and his fame was gained as a Far Westerner, Cincinnatus Hiner Miller was an Indianian by birth and must be considered here, whether or not he was, as critic Van Wyck Brooks has said, "the greatest liar living … half a mountebank and all the time a showman."

Cincinnatus Hiner Miller was born, son of Hulings and Margaret Witt Miller, in Liberty, Ind., on Mar. 10, 1839. Hulings Miller was a Quaker; a school- master by profession and a wanderer by preference. The family had lived in Ohio before Cincinnatus was born and they moved on to the west as he grew up, stopping in various states and territories while the elder Miller taught a term or two of school. Finally, in 1852 the Millers reached their destination, the Oregon country. According to the Dictionary of American Biography, in Oregon, "At about the age of seventeen, his son 'Nat' as he was called, ran away from home in company with another boy. They found their way to one of the mining camps in Northern California where Miller obtained employment as a cook. Being a rather delicate lad, he fell seriously ill with the scurvy as the result of the bad food and his own cooking. He was nursed back to health by a Dr. Ream in Yreka, Cal., and was subsequently befriended by a gambler named James Thompson, who figures attractively in his writings as 'The Prince.' Despite Miller's lifelong assertion that he was wounded in the battle of Castle Rocks against the Modocs, on June 15, 1855, residents of that vicinity scouted the claim that he had taken part in the skirmish. Probably in 1856 Miller made the acquaintance of Joseph De Bloney, known as 'Mountain Joe.' According to Miller's story, the mountaineer proposed to establish an Indian republic at the base of Mount Shasta. If so grandiose a scheme was planned, it went no further than the building of a road-house in which Miller did the cooking. In the spring of 1857 he went to live with an Indian tribe, the Diggers, and married one of their women, who bore him a daughter, Cali-Shasta. His native associates were noted horse-thieves, and Miller, as a preliminary to establishing the republic, fell in with their ways. He was captured, after an exciting chase, on July 8, 1859, but was rescued the same night by a friend who sawed through the bars of the jail window. Although he had no share in the Pit River massacre of this year, the Shasta region became very unsafe for any Indian sympathizer, and Miller, soon after it, wisely returned to Oregon.

"He then for a time attended an academy named 'Columbia College' in Eugene, taught school for a while in Clarke, Washington Territory, studied law on the side, and was admitted to the bar in Portland, Ore., in 1861. Instead of practising, he established in 1862, in company with one Isaac Mossman, a pony page: 218[View Page 218] express between Washington Territory and ldaho. With its proceeds, he purchased in 1863 the DEMOCRATIC REGISTER in Eugene and became an editor. His first appearance in print had been a letter in defense of the Mexican bandit, Joaquin Murietta, which had resulted in his friends nick-naming him 'Joaquin;' the name pleased him better than his own more burdensome one and in time he adopted it as his pen name. Some verses of his attracted the attention of a poetically minded girl in Port Orford, Ore., named Minnie Theresa Dyer, who wrote to him enthusiastically about them. After some correspondence, Miller rode over to Port Orford and returned the same week with Minnie Myrtle, as he called her, as his bride. His newspaper being suppressed by the government because of its support of the Confederacy, the editor moved to Canyon City, Ore., where he soon won the favor of his fellow-townsmen by successfully leading a party of them against a band of hostile Indians. He was rewarded by being elected judge of the Grant County court in 1866. A little later his wife, now the mother of two children, separated from him. Miller solaced his loneliness by bringing out two volumes of poetry, Specimens (1868) and Joaquin et dl (1869). Those attracted some attention, and in 1870 he went down to San Francisco to enjoy his reclame and was there admitted to the circle which included Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Ina Coolbrith.

"Thence he started on a literary pilgrimage to England . After visiting the Burns and Byron shrines, he attempted to find a London publisher for a compilation of his own verse, some of which had already appeared in newspapers, under the title, Pacific Poems. Failing in this, he printed the book privately and succeeded in gaining the attention of the critics. William Michael Rossetti took him up and introduced him to London literary circles, where his striking appearance in chaps and sombrero, which he wore indoors and out, soon made him the sensation of the season. In 1871 Longmans published his Songs of the Sierras, which in spite of its cheap rhythms and Byronic imitations was loudly acclaimed by the British. Its reception in America was less favorable, critics refusing to accept its romanticism as a genuine expression of the Far West. Attention was also unkindly called to the author's lack of learning which had led him into sundry errors in his poems, such as riming 'Goethe' with 'teeth.' A brief visit to America convincing the poet of his unpopularity, he sought consolation in foreign travel. During the next few years he visited South America, Europe, and possibly the Near East. In 1873 he published Songs of the Sun-Lands, and, in prose, Life Amongst the Modocs (republished with variations under other titles), regarded by Stuart Sherman as 'his most interesting book.' These were followed by The Ship in the Desert (1875), The Baroness of New York (1877), Songs of Italy (1878), showing the influence of Browning, and a prose Indian romance, Shadows of Shasta (1881). He also published several dramas, of which The Danites in the Sierras (1881), a Mormon play, was the most successful. In 1884 appeared Memorie and Rime, an autobiographical miscellany, and in 1886 The Destruction of Gotham, an unsuccessful novel. His last prose works were An Illustrated History of Montana (1894), a typical subscription history, and The Building of the City Beautiful (1897), showing Miller as a Utopist. In 1897, also, he published the Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller. His narrative poem, Light, which was published in 1907, was his last bid for fame and represents his closest approach to full maturity as a poet.

"Meanwhile, Miller had returned to America and tried living in New York, Boston, and Washington , all of which were too crowded for his taste. In 1883 he married Abbie Leland, and in 1886 he settled permanently in Oakland , Cal. There on the hills above the town he purchased an estate, known as 'The Heights' (in Miller's spelling usually 'The Hights'), which he adorned with trees and stone monuments to Fremont, Browning, and Moses, and with a funeral pyre to be used at his own death. For many years he was one of the landmarks of California. As a bearded sage and advocate of the simple life he was looked upon with a respect which was mingled with amusement at his eccentricities and horror at his theories of free love. In 1897-98 he found renewed adventures as correspondent of the NEW YORK JOURNAL in the Klondike. By the time of his death in 1913 the West that he loved had vanished. The best of his work remains of significance as an attempt, never wholly successful, to celebrate on a heroic scale its freedom and its beauty …"

E. S. B., The Dictionary of dmerican Biography, Vol. XII.

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