Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/174



and asked about her welfare and then took them all upon the rostrum and introduced them. After that she never saw him again.

10 GOOD-BY FROM THE CLIFFS

By Joaquin Miller

Joaquin Miller in his younger days was a squaw man but his own record of his wilderness marriage is obscure and dubious. The history of Siskiyou County, California, published in 1881, seven years after his own account, says: "No one expects a poet to tell the truth, even when he makes a pretense of doing so... . He claims to have married the daughter of a Modoc chief, when he never lived within a hun dred miles of the Modocs... . He lived with a McLeod River squaw, who still gains a precarious livelihood in the cabin of another squaw man, who seems to have stuck to it longer than the poet. A few years ago he took his half-breed daughter from the mountain wilds to be educated, an act for which he deserves great credit, contrasted, as i..., with the course pursued by many pominent men, some of military fame, who have families of uncared-for children in the mountains." In reference to this statement in the Siskiyou County history, George Sterling has said

"As to the half-breed daughter, whose name was Calli Shasta... i s true that Joaquin had her venture down into 'civilization.' The education conferred, however, was no great matter, for she went merely to the public schools for a brief period. Such culture as she acquired was due to Ina Coolbrith, who was for seven years her foster-mother, and with whom she live... San Francisco... . after the girl's marriage had proved a failure, she went to live with her father on The Hights, died there shortly, an... buried on the westward-giving hillside... " In Unwritten History: Life Amongst the Modocs, sometimes called Paquita the Indian Heroine, Miller wrote on one page: "The mar riage ceremony of these peopl... not imposing. The father gives a great feast, to which all are invited, but the bride and bridegroom do not partake of food." On the next page, without any intervening or previous description of a romance, he concluded the chapter cryptically: "Late in the fall, the old chief made the marriage-feast, and at that feast neither I nor his daughter took meat. .. ." Subsequently, until the last chapter, his references to her remained meager and vague, advisedly so: "In the sprin... . . pushed back over the moun tains to my Indians. All were there, Paquita, Klamat, the chief, and his daughter, who, although she was much to me, I shall barely m