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
