“Joaquin” Cincinnatus Hiner Miller (1841 - 1913)
Cincinnatus Hiner Miller was born near Liberty, Indiana. He and his family crossed the plains by wagon train and moved to Oregon in 1852. He helped his parents build a house and then moved on to California during the gold rush. He started writing poetry in 1854 while he was working at various jobs including cooking and mining. He fought against the tribes and lived with the Wintu [Medocs?]. Between 1857 and 1859, he attended college for a few months at a time in Eugene, Oregon. In 1860/61, he mined, rode for the Pony Express in Idaho and Montana, and wrote for the newspapers. In 1862, he edited a newspaper in Eugene and got married. Miller and his wife settled in Canon City, Oregon where he practiced law and became a judge.1)
After his divorce, Cincinnatus moved to San Francisco where he adopted the name Joaquin, from his poem about a bandit, and then sailed for London, England where he became a success with his collected poems, Songs of the Sierras. He returned to the States in 1981 to see his family and publish an autobiographical novel, Life Amongst the Medocs: Unwritten History. In 1886, he moved to Oakland, California and started writing for the San Francisco Examiner.2)
After gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896 his brother, George Miller, organized the Alaska Gold Mining and Navigation Company, built the steamer Klondike, and offered shares of stock in the new company. In 1897 Joaquin went east on a lecture tour and then headed north.3) Miller went to the Klondike as a correspondent for William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers. In July 1897, Miller was on the steamer City of Mexico travelling with journalist E.J. Livernash and photographer Charles Kreling.4) Kreling may have been an alias for his travelling companion H. E. Canavan as Miller seldom gave correct names in his articles.5) Miller wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribute while he was enroute saying he had been in almost all the continent’s stampedes over the last forty years.6) His deal with the San Francisco Examiner’s editor was that he provide a half page article for the Sunday edition for $50 a week and he was to pay his own expenses. This was a great comedown from the days when he received $1500 a month for his articles.7)
The newspapermen arrived in Dawson in mid-August 1897, having travelled from the coast in a quick two weeks. By mid-September they were settled into a log cabin with a “Klondike News Bureau” banner. Their cabin was close to cabins occupied by other journalists representing Harper’s Weekly, Frank Leslie’s Monthly, New York Times, and Chicago Tribune. Miller intended to leave the north near the end of September but had to turn back at Circle, Alaska when the navigation season for the Yukon River closed.8) His “Comrades of the Klondike” (“Chilkoot Pass”) was mailed from Circle City in October 1897.9) He and companion W.H.E. Canavan travelled back to Dawson with Al Thayer, George Ransbury, and Paul, a First Nation guide. Joaquin’s “Stampedes on the Klondike” was published in the Christmas issue of the Overland Monthy (San Francisco). The Hearst newspapers published his heavily edited correspondence from the Klondike in January, February, May, and July issues. His “Daily Life in a Klondike Cabin” was published in Land of Sunshine 9, No. 1, June 1898.10)
Miller left Dawson in late June and arrived in Skagway in late July 1898. In 1900, Joaquin left to report on the Chinese Boxer War and his brother George mined at Porcupine Creek near the Alaska / British Columbia border. From July to November 1897, Joaquin Miller was one the United States’ most quoted Klondike stampeders.11)