California Indian - Portraits from the North Coast 1890-1925 (15 pages)

PAGE12 THECALIFORNIANS NOV./DEC.1991 the Mexican style of dress, with a wealth of black hair on his shoulders, a cloak on his arm, and a pistol in his belr. On one of Miller’s later trips through Yreka, California in early November, 1871, he and Dr. Daniel Ream “in a buckboard, visited old scenes and companions on McAdams Creek and surrounding regions.” Also emerging in Life Amongst the Modocs was Bill Orr, Miller's companion on the elk hunt with the Indians at che headwaters of the McCloud River. According to the 1850 Federal Census, William Orr was a 32-yearold miner in Shasta County, and a Pennsylvania native. Miller also referred Mountains. Trails went on east down into the Pit River to Dr. George Silverthorn’s and/or Jim Brock’s place. On this trip Miller was accompanied by an Indian whom he called “Limber Jim” and who by Miller's description must have been the full-blood Wintu known as “Campbell’s Jim” listed in the 1900 Sacramento River Township Census as being 65 years old. So fully does Miller utilize his own expetiences and so thinly does he disguise the real identities of his supposedly fictional characters that despite the inaccuracy of describing Wintu as Modoc, he has left us what is perhaps the most intimate, accurate unknown to San Francisco's literary circle until the publication in the 1870s of Joaquin, etal, his poem about the Robin Hood of El Dorado. Joaquin Murieta’s escapades must have struck a resonant chord in Cincinnatus Miller: had he not been living the life of an Indian and seeing himself as an organizing general in their war to retain their land and their rights against the flood of incoming whites? The futility of his situation came home to him when, as he wrote in Life Amongst the Modocs, he realized the Indians’ inability to understand the total impossibility of their succeeding when one old Indian at a council meeting, sitting back in a rock crevice, called to him in his California Diary, in an entry that he wrote in the Wintu language. Miller was the first white man known to have recorded the Wintu language and the second was New Jersey-born printer Jeremiah Blizzard Campbell, who later became a spokesman for the McCloud River Wintu. After learning Wintu, Campbell compiled a Wintu dictionary that burned in a fire at his cabin on the McCloud River. Campbell took The National Geographic and, like Miller, would Miller’s writings may be the most intimate, accurate existing insight into the minds and lives of Indians and miners and the cataclysmic elimination of thousands of Indians over 40 years along the McCloud River. He realized the futility of the Indians’ plight when one tribal elder mused that “what matters a few steps of ground when there is so much.” out, “‘Ah! what matters a few steps of ground where there is so much?’ I saw my little Republic going to pieces even before it had been fairly launched, and slept but little chat night.” Fortunately for us, Joaquin Miller was able to incorporate into his writings the newspaper accounts of the miners, the Indians and such striking individuals as Joaquin Murieta and filibustering William Walker, setting them in the scenery from the land of his own experiences along the Sacramento, Mcwrite a bit of poetry and visit with the local newspaper editors. The lives of Campbell and Miller were parallel in several ways. Campbell's son Joe said in 1945 that Miller and Campbell had attended the same one-room school in Indiana. Campbell was also near Shasta City, at Soda Springs, and elsewhere on the Sacramento River in the 1850—60s, as was Miller. And Campbell’s Indian wife, Mary, formerly of Norelputis’ camp, died in 1909, as did Miller’s Amanda. The Indians buried Amanda with Mary Campbell in the Campbell Family Cemetery on the McCloud River, where Mary’s sisters had recently been reburied with her. Campbell and Miller also had a mutual friend named Dr. George Silverthorn, who also married an Indian woman. Silverthorn lived on the Pit River at what was later known as Silverthorn’s Ferry. Some of that area’s scenery described in Life Amongst the Modocs by Miller is unknown to most Californians, encompassing the trail that went from Tubaste (old Pollock, now under the waters of Shasta Lake west of Lower Salt Creek) across the ridge that divides the Sacramento River from the McCloud River, thence down to the McCloud past a deserted Indian village which later became Jeremiah Campbell’s ranch, and across Curl Ridge through a saddle between what are now known as Minnesota and Town existing insight into the lives and thoughts of that era’s miners and Indians and of the genocide that wiped out thousands of Indians in less than 40 years along the McCloud River. Miller's novel was the first real manifesto of che Western Indians. Mae has been written of the conflict going on inside of Miller, torn between his love for Indians and their way of life and his need to be a part of the white man’s world. In Life Amongst the Modocs, Miller writes that he should have stayed and continued to lead the Indians in his dream for them to be again the inhabitants of their lands along Mt. Shasta’s rivers. But Miller’s yearning to prove himself a poet, his exposure to the books of educated miners and his all too brief higher educational experience at Columbia College in Eugene, Oregon in 1857/58 impelled him back into the white man’s world. He was, after all, the son of a Quaker school teacher who emigrated from Indiana to Oregon with his sons in 1852. And so Miller, through continuous writing and rewriting as well as through marriages and other female contacts, moved himself along in the literary world. Miller’s earliest nom de plume poetic efforts were recognized in 1859 by some country editors. However, he was largely Cloud and Pit Rivers, every defile of which Joaquin Miller knew well from his six years in those areas. Finding that this device worked, he repeated it, embroidering and expanding on it in most of his writings. Again and again, one meets his Indian woman in many guises, and again and again one runs through his streams and tides over his mountains peering down chasms into rivers frothing through Shasta County’s canyons. Joaquin Miller was one of the first creators of “faction” (fact as fiction), and history has proven his facts. That people denounced him as a poseur, an Indian lover, a sympathizer with Chinamen and a thief meant nothing to Miller. A true Bohemian, he was happy with the regard of his friends and with meeting the likes of Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Tennyson and Robert Browning in England. Later, he enjoyed planting trees on his barren Qakland hillside “Hights.” Being called a “native genius” by Ambrose Bierce meant more to Miller than the criticism of jealous literary types such as Bret Harte or uneducated haters of Indians and Orientals. Traeling to Alaska, Hawaii and Chinachronicling these journeys in newsp articles and stories made it financiall: sible for him to hold court at his “F for his friends — Herman Whitaker Sterling, Jack London, Edward 4 i

PAGE12 THECALIFORNIANS NOV./DEC.1991 the Mexican style of dress, with a wealth of black hair on his shoulders, a cloak on his arm, and a pistol in his belr. On one of Miller’s later trips through Yreka, California in early November, 1871, he and Dr. Daniel Ream “in a buckboard, visited old scenes and companions on McAdams Creek and surrounding regions.” Also emerging in Life Amongst the Modocs was Bill Orr, Miller's companion on the elk hunt with the Indians at che headwaters of the McCloud River. According to the 1850 Federal Census, William Orr was a 32-yearold miner in Shasta County, and a Pennsylvania native. Miller also referred Mountains. Trails went on east down into the Pit River to Dr. George Silverthorn’s and/or Jim Brock’s place. On this trip Miller was accompanied by an Indian whom he called “Limber Jim” and who by Miller's description must have been the full-blood Wintu known as “Campbell’s Jim” listed in the 1900 Sacramento River Township Census as being 65 years old. So fully does Miller utilize his own expetiences and so thinly does he disguise the real identities of his supposedly fictional characters that despite the inaccuracy of describing Wintu as Modoc, he has left us what is perhaps the most intimate, accurate unknown to San Francisco's literary circle until the publication in the 1870s of Joaquin, etal, his poem about the Robin Hood of El Dorado. Joaquin Murieta’s escapades must have struck a resonant chord in Cincinnatus Miller: had he not been living the life of an Indian and seeing himself as an organizing general in their war to retain their land and their rights against the flood of incoming whites? The futility of his situation came home to him when, as he wrote in Life Amongst the Modocs, he realized the Indians’ inability to understand the total impossibility of their succeeding when one old Indian at a council meeting, sitting back in a rock crevice, called to him in his California Diary, in an entry that he wrote in the Wintu language. Miller was the first white man known to have recorded the Wintu language and the second was New Jersey-born printer Jeremiah Blizzard Campbell, who later became a spokesman for the McCloud River Wintu. After learning Wintu, Campbell compiled a Wintu dictionary that burned in a fire at his cabin on the McCloud River. Campbell took The National Geographic and, like Miller, would Miller’s writings may be the most intimate, accurate existing insight into the minds and lives of Indians and miners and the cataclysmic elimination of thousands of Indians over 40 years along the McCloud River. He realized the futility of the Indians’ plight when one tribal elder mused that “what matters a few steps of ground when there is so much.” out, “‘Ah! what matters a few steps of ground where there is so much?’ I saw my little Republic going to pieces even before it had been fairly launched, and slept but little chat night.” Fortunately for us, Joaquin Miller was able to incorporate into his writings the newspaper accounts of the miners, the Indians and such striking individuals as Joaquin Murieta and filibustering William Walker, setting them in the scenery from the land of his own experiences along the Sacramento, Mcwrite a bit of poetry and visit with the local newspaper editors. The lives of Campbell and Miller were

parallel in several ways. Campbell's son Joe said in 1945 that Miller and Campbell had attended the same one-room school in Indiana. Campbell was also near Shasta City, at Soda Springs, and elsewhere on the Sacramento River in the 1850—60s, as was Miller. And Campbell’s Indian wife, Mary, formerly of Norelputis’ camp, died in 1909, as did Miller’s Amanda. The Indians buried Amanda with Mary Campbell in the Campbell Family Cemetery on the McCloud River, where Mary’s sisters had recently been reburied with her. Campbell and Miller also had a mutual friend named Dr. George Silverthorn, who also married an Indian woman. Silverthorn lived on the Pit River at what was later known as Silverthorn’s Ferry. Some of that area’s scenery described in Life Amongst the Modocs by Miller is unknown to most Californians, encompassing the trail that went from Tubaste (old Pollock, now under the waters of Shasta Lake west of Lower Salt Creek) across the ridge that divides the Sacramento River from the McCloud River, thence down to the McCloud past a deserted Indian village which later became Jeremiah Campbell’s ranch, and across Curl Ridge through a saddle between what are now known as Minnesota and Town existing insight into the lives and thoughts of that era’s miners and Indians and of the genocide that wiped out thousands of Indians in less than 40 years along the McCloud River. Miller's novel was the first real manifesto of che Western Indians. Mae has been written of the conflict going on inside of Miller, torn between his love for Indians and their way of life and his need to be a part of the white man’s world. In Life Amongst the Modocs, Miller writes that he should have stayed and continued to lead the Indians in his dream for them to be again the inhabitants of their lands along Mt. Shasta’s rivers. But Miller’s yearning to prove himself a poet, his exposure to the books of educated miners and his all too brief higher educational experience at Columbia College in Eugene, Oregon in 1857/58 impelled him back into the white man’s world. He was, after all, the son of a Quaker school teacher who emigrated from Indiana to Oregon with his sons in 1852. And so Miller, through continuous writing and rewriting as well as through marriages and other female contacts, moved himself along in the literary world. Miller’s earliest nom de plume poetic efforts were recognized in 1859 by some country editors. However, he was largely Cloud and Pit Rivers, every defile of which Joaquin Miller knew well from his six years in those areas. Finding that this device worked, he repeated it, embroidering and expanding on it in most of his writings. Again and again, one meets his Indian woman in many guises, and again and again one runs through his streams and tides over his mountains peering down chasms into rivers frothing through Shasta County’s canyons. Joaquin Miller was one of the first creators of “faction” (fact as fiction), and history has proven his facts. That people denounced him as a poseur, an Indian lover, a sympathizer with Chinamen and a thief meant nothing to Miller. A true Bohemian, he was happy with the regard of his friends and with meeting the likes of Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Tennyson and Robert Browning in England. Later, he enjoyed planting trees on his barren Qakland hillside “Hights.” Being called a “native genius” by Ambrose Bierce meant more to Miller than the criticism of jealous literary types such as Bret Harte or uneducated haters of Indians and Orientals. Traeling to Alaska, Hawaii and Chinachronicling these journeys in newsp articles and stories made it financiall: sible for him to hold court at his “F for his friends — Herman Whitaker Sterling, Jack London, Edward 4 i