Much like Columbus and his voyages of discovery, there is a strong element of myth-making in the life and personality of Joaquin Miller. Miller’s life was full of adventure (and misadventures), and included much traveling—especially in the American Wild West. Although now known as a poet, Miller held a variety of occupations during his life, and represented himself in his autobiographical writings as a restless drifter forever in search of something new. Miller claimed to have lived amongst a Native American tribe for a year, to have participated in the California Gold Rush, and to have gone abroad to England for some travels in 1870. His recorded antics reveal that he sometimes flip-flopped between being on the wrong and right side of the law: He got into legal trouble because of accusations of theft, but later in life was (supposedly) a lawyer and a judge.

Biographical accounts of Miller agree it is difficult to know what is fact and what is fiction in the accounts of Miller’s life. Regardless of what the truth may be, Miller was variously known as “Poet of the Sierras” and “Byron of the Rockies” due to his persona as a frontiersman; it is this fact that is the most illuminating in light of “Columbus” as a literary work.