of German birth, who had been with Fremont, and who furnished Miller some of the materials for his poems. He was also on intimate terms with the Indian Chief Blackbeard, who, he remarks in Memorie and Rime, had a very beautiful daughter, and gave him a "beautiful little valley," where he built a cabin, and "first began to write." According to Life Among the Modocs, a romance with an autobiographical core, he married the chief's daughter and became eventually the leader in the movement to unite the tribes in an Indian republic. These stories of his Indian bride and of his fighting defiance of the white men seem rather more plausible when one forgets that he was but fourteen when he remarked the beauty of the girl and only seventeen when he assumed the responsibilities for which, according to Memorie and Rime, De Bloney's growing inebriety disqualified him.
Viewed from within by a romantic poet, this colony of adventurers and Indians was a noble enterprise for the preservation of an oppressed race; viewed from without it probably seemed more like a nest of horse-thieves. Its importance for Miller was partly in its development of his romantic sympathy with the outlaw. In a paper on "How I Came to Be a Writer Of Books," contributed to Lippincott's in 1886, he illustrates this point, and, at the same time, explains the origin of his pen-name "Joaquin." His parents had called him Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner); but, during his sojourn on
