The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-01-04
STRANGE CAREER.
A Cherokee Indian Who Fought Un-
der Robert Il. Lee.
From the Nashville American.

From the Nashville american.
Olympus Monroe Wilson is the hetero-
geneouS name of an Indian who has been i'll
Nashville for several weeks, and who has
been connected with some of the most stir
ring events in the West during the early
days when settlers carried their lives in
their hands. He was born fifty-eght years
ago near Tahlequah, the capital of the
Cherokee Nation, the son of a tull-blooded
Cherokee woman and a half-breed. He has
since his 18th year, when he enlisted in the
Texas Rangers, been scout, soldier, trapper,
miner, farmer, and now in his old age has
turned his face from the Lone Star State to
the far away home OF his youth i'll the In
dian Territory.
He has been three times married, has
buried each wife and five children, and now
seems to want 10 live only till he can once
more see his only son in the forests where
he was born. He is afflicted with heart dis
ease, and realizes that he may die any mo-
ment, but his forttude never deserts him,
and although suffering from n terrible
wound IN battle received forty-five years
ago, and from other injuries which kept
him in hospital four years, stripped in re-
cent years OF the small property he had ac-
CURED, he bears his misfoi tunes with the
characteristic Indian stoicism. He is not
slovenly nor dlssipated, as the popular
mind pictures the Indian redeemed to par
tial civilization, but a tine-looking, sober
and remarkably intelligent man. When a
young man he went to California as a gold
miner.
One day heavily laden wagon ran over
his body and he was confined for years to
hospital. His life was despaired of but the
constant attention of an English physician
who became interested in him finally re-
stored him to partial health. During his
sickness his kind nurse taught him to read
AID write, and for years he has read a great
deal, as his conversati on shows. When
mere lad he fought the Comanche Indians
who deprecated on the Texas border, and
served under Ben Mccullough, who after
ward became a General. The Chero-
KEGS were the first Indians with whom the
colonists became acquainted, and since the
founding of jamestown, Va, have been the
most tractable of Indians, SO that it
was scarcely to be wondered at that this
young son of the tribe, who had white
blood in his veins, should have been found
in alliance against the Comanche maraud-
ers. The first battle with them in which
he took part was in 1874, on the spot where
San Antonio now stands and fifteen red
skins bit the dust At one time he fought
under Robert E. Lee who was then Colonel
OF the Second United States Dragoous. Lee
was in pursuit of band of ComancheS who
had committed serious depredations, and
caught them on a tributary of the Colorado
river. The engagement was sharp and
brief, Lee forcing the Indians to the hills
and killing over thirty. His force was sixty
men, while the Indians outnunbered him
ten to one. Wilson said to an american
reporter that he remembered Lee distinctly,
that he was even then, when young man,
remarkably self-posseSsed in battle and
quick to execute plans, fearless and I'M
firing, qualities which were four decades
later signally displayed on many battle
field.
Wilson is ripe in Indian lore, and has
evidently beel a calm student of their his
| tory in recent years. He remarked in illus
tration of the rapid disappearance of the
Indian: War, pestilence and whisky are
pursuing their deadly work with astonish-
ing effect. In 1913 there were 20, 900 Com
anches, the last census shows only 800 In
| fifty years do not believe that there will
| be an organized Indian tribe in the coun-
try. The Apaches are about the only wild
Indians. You can find the redskin in all of
the Territories, but the tendency is to col
lect in the Indian Territory, or as we call it
the -Four Tribes. In 1882, that region, then
part of the Territory of Arkansas, was
made the property of the Choctaw, Chero-
kee, Chickasa and Creek Indians, and so
| it has remained"