The personality of Cincinnatus Heine Miller, better known as “Joaquin”
Miller, is as picturesque as has been his career. In turn a miner,
lawyer, express rider, editor, poet and newspaper man, Mr. Miller
has amassed a fund of experiences such as rarely falls to the lot
of the ordinary individual. That his literary gifts enable him to
reproduce in vivid fashion many of these same happenings is a matter
for self-congratulation on the part of the reading public. What is yet
more fortunate is that he preserves in his poems the breath of the
prairie, the air of the mountains and the “tang” of that west that
is rapidly passing into nothingness. The poet was born in the Wabash
district of Indiana, November 10, 1841. In 1850 his parents removed
to Oregon, and there is but little doubt that the wild and beautiful
scenery amid which he spent his childhood had had much to do with
fostering his then undeveloped poetical instincts. When the famous rush
of gold seekers to the Pacific coast took place in 1859, young Miller
was among the Argonauts. He does not appear to have been particularly
successful in his hunt for gold, and returned to Oregon in 1860. Then
he began to study law, supporting himself in the meantime by acting as
express rider in Idaho. In 1863 he started the Eugene (Ore.) Democratic
Register, which, however, had a brief existence. Later he opened a law
office in Canon City, and in 1866 went to London, where he remained
until 1870. It was in that city that he published his first book of
poems. It received a most favorable reception, and established him as
a poet of a unique type and quality. Returning to this country, he did
some years of newspaper work in Washington, D. C., but finally drifted
back to the Pacific coast, and devoted himself entirely to literature.
In 1897, acting as correspondent for the New York newspaper, he visited
the Klondike to compare modern miners with those of ’59. Some of his
best known books of poems are Songs of the Sierras, Pacific Palms, The
One Fair Woman, Songs of the Sunland, etc. He is also a playwright.
One of the most important and successful of his dramas is The Danites.
He lives in a picturesque home, known as the Heights, at Oakland,
California.