Cincinnatus Heine Miller (SIN-sin-AY-təs HY-nə; September 8, 1837 – February 17, 1913), better known by his pen name Joaquin Miller (whah-KEEN), was an American poet, author, and frontiersman. He became known as the "Poet of the Sierras" after the Sierra Nevada, about which he wrote in his Songs of the Sierras (1871).
Early years and family
Joaquin Miller's parents were Hulings Miller and Margaret (née Witt), who married January 3, 1836, in Union County, Indiana. Their second son, Cincinnatus Hiner Miller, was born in 1837 near Liberty, Indiana. Miller later claimed his birth date was November 10, 1841, and that he was born in Millersville, Indiana, a town he claimed was founded by his father, while on a wagon heading west. As he wrote, "My cradle was a covered wagon, pointed west". After leaving Union County, Miller's father moved the family to Grant County, Indiana to a location near the Mississinewa River and near the Miami Indian Reservation. Between 1850 and 1852, his family followed the Oregon Trail to settle in the Willamette Valley, establishing a farm in what would become Lane County.
Well educated by his school teacher father, Miller was an avid reader. Besides later adopting the pen name "Joaquin", he would also change his middle name from Hiner to Heine to evoke the German poet Heinrich Heine.
As a young man, he moved to northern California during the California Gold Rush years, and had a variety of adventures, including spending a year living in a Native American village, and being wounded in a battle with Native Americans. A number of his popular works, Life Amongst the Modocs, An Elk Hunt, and The Battle of Castle Crags, draw on these experiences. He was wounded in the cheek and neck with an arrow during this latter battle, recuperating at the Gold Rush-era mining town of Portuguese Flat.
