The New International Encyclopædia/Miller, Cincinnatus Heine

MILLER, Cincinnatus Heine, better known as Joaquin Miller (1841—). An American author, born in the Wabash District, Indiana, November 10, 1841. In 1854 his parents took him to Oregon. Later he became a miner in California. He was a volunteer in Walker's Nicaragua expedition of 1855. From 1855 until 1860 he lived among the Indians of the Pacific Coast. He studied law for a while, then edited a Democratic paper at Eugene City, Ore., which was suppressed by the authorities for disunion sentiments. In 1863 he began to practice law and was a district judge in Oregon from 1866 to 1870. After visiting the Eastern States Miller went to England, where, in the following year, he published his Songs of the Sierras, which made him a temporary ‘lion’ in London society, although the same poems had fallen flat in the United States. He afterwards settled in New York, but he left that city in order to do journalistic work in Washington, D. C, and in Oakland, Cal. (1887), settling at last in Oakland. Among his works in verse are: Songs of the Sunland (1873); Songs of Italy (1878); Songs of the Mexican Seas (1887); in prose: The Danites in the Sierras (a novel, 1881); 49, or the Gold Seekers of the Sierras (1884). Miller's play, The Danites, taken from his novel, had considerable success, and his poetry has received some favorable notice, more on account of its genuinely romantic content and its brilliant if crude color, than on account of its artistic excellence. A collective edition of his verses appeared in 1897. The name ‘Joaquin’ was taken from Joaquin Murietta, a Mexican bandit, of whom Miller wrote a defense.