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Shadows of Shasta (Original and Unabridged Content) (Old Version)
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
Kindle Edition
First published November 30, 2005
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About the author
Joaquin Miller
317 books13 followersJoaquin Miller (Cincinnatus Heine, or Hiner, Miller) was the pen name of the colorful American poet, essayist and fabulist Cincinnatus Heiner Miller.
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May 3, 2022
Joaquin Miller was quite the character. This I suppose was a weird one for me to start with, never having read his other material and never having known anything about him other than that there's a statue dedicated to him in a local park.
The introduction intrigued me. He talks very directly about the inhumane treatment of the natives of the Mount Shasta area by the settlers, calls out against "man-hunting", calls a leader of such "a man- or fiend in the form of a man", and says, "It is impossible to write with composure or evenness on this subject. One wants to rise up and crush things."
But don't expect something attuned to your modern sensibilities. This was written in the 1800s after all. He says a few times that there is "nothing so beautiful" as an Indian who has become "civilized" to "the way of the white man" and devoted to Christianity. Of course now we talk about the horrors of coerced and forced cultural assimilation and functional extinction of their cultures; no one would dare praise that now. He also has the typical Woman Problem of male writers, knowing nothing at all to say about women other than about their beauty. Over and over and over again. But of course, I expected this. It's just an aside.
So after the intro, the book itself follows three Native folks living in the forests near a settler camp, avoiding capture by agents of the reservations. Miller describes the reservations as being disease ridden hell pits where the water is slime with worms, and the majority of the captives begin to wither and die in imprisonment shortly after they arrive. The three of them - Carrie, Stumps, and John Logan - promise to kill themselves rather than be taken to a reservation, just like Miller (in the intro) described first-hand accounts of, with veneration. They have white associates from the camps, with let's just say, lightly complicated relationships. The dialogue is plain and corny by today's standards. Miller clearly wanted to give a humanity to these people he saw being mistreated; his life as far as I've read has been one way and then another, but he did fancy himself as someone who hated to see humans chained and taken down like animals. It is the entire purpose and lesson of this short book.
I read it all in one night and fell asleep thinking about it. I live in the Mt Shasta area now, where there is hardly a sign of the people who lived here before settlers. In the local museum, we have one section of one room dedicated to native peoples, and twelve times that amount dedicated to the first settlers, the gold, and the railroads. Which forests that I explore for fun were once populated by native peoples, and then later protected a few scarce souls hiding from reservation agents just like Carrie, Stumps, John Logan, and John Logan's mother?
The introduction intrigued me. He talks very directly about the inhumane treatment of the natives of the Mount Shasta area by the settlers, calls out against "man-hunting", calls a leader of such "a man- or fiend in the form of a man", and says, "It is impossible to write with composure or evenness on this subject. One wants to rise up and crush things."
But don't expect something attuned to your modern sensibilities. This was written in the 1800s after all. He says a few times that there is "nothing so beautiful" as an Indian who has become "civilized" to "the way of the white man" and devoted to Christianity. Of course now we talk about the horrors of coerced and forced cultural assimilation and functional extinction of their cultures; no one would dare praise that now. He also has the typical Woman Problem of male writers, knowing nothing at all to say about women other than about their beauty. Over and over and over again. But of course, I expected this. It's just an aside.
So after the intro, the book itself follows three Native folks living in the forests near a settler camp, avoiding capture by agents of the reservations. Miller describes the reservations as being disease ridden hell pits where the water is slime with worms, and the majority of the captives begin to wither and die in imprisonment shortly after they arrive. The three of them - Carrie, Stumps, and John Logan - promise to kill themselves rather than be taken to a reservation, just like Miller (in the intro) described first-hand accounts of, with veneration. They have white associates from the camps, with let's just say, lightly complicated relationships. The dialogue is plain and corny by today's standards. Miller clearly wanted to give a humanity to these people he saw being mistreated; his life as far as I've read has been one way and then another, but he did fancy himself as someone who hated to see humans chained and taken down like animals. It is the entire purpose and lesson of this short book.
I read it all in one night and fell asleep thinking about it. I live in the Mt Shasta area now, where there is hardly a sign of the people who lived here before settlers. In the local museum, we have one section of one room dedicated to native peoples, and twelve times that amount dedicated to the first settlers, the gold, and the railroads. Which forests that I explore for fun were once populated by native peoples, and then later protected a few scarce souls hiding from reservation agents just like Carrie, Stumps, John Logan, and John Logan's mother?
Displaying 1 of 1 review