Miller, Joaquin

Miller, Joaquin (wäkēn') [key], pseud. of Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner) Miller,1839?–1913, American poet, b. Liberty, Ind. In 1852 his family moved to frontier Oregon. He lived in gold-mining camps, later with Native Americans, and was in turn an express rider, an editor, and an Oregon judge. His first two volumes of poems, Specimens (1868) and Joaquin et al. (1869), contained energetic, rhetorical celebrations of frontier life. They brought him only local acclaim, but in England, where he went next, his colorful personality, his dramatic Western costume, and his Songs of the Sierras (1871) made him famous as a frontier poet. See his autobiography (1898; ed. by S. G. Firman, 1930).