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            This man’s name was John Phillips, but everyone called him Portugee Phil.  He was a civilian scout with the U.S. Army in the turbulent days just after the Civil War when the Indians of the Western plains realized that they had no choice but to fight or be overrun by the tide of white settlers sweeping west.

            In Dec. 1866, the Sioux were on the warpath under their great chief, Red Cloud.  With their allies, the Cheyennes, they were trying to stop the whites from building a string of forts along the Powder River from Fort Laramie to the gold fields of Montana.  In what is now northern Wyoming, they had the little garrison at Fort Kearny under virtual siege.

            A fiery young officer, Captain William Fetterman, said to his commander, “Give me eighty men and I’ll ride through the whole Sioux nation!”  He got his eighty men, was decoyed into an ambush, and massacred with his entire command.  Not a man escaped.  One officer was found with 120 arrows in his body.

            This left the garrison at Fort Kearney in a desperate plight.  That night a raging blizzard sent the temperature down to thirty below zero.  The commander knew that the storm would prevent an Indian attack for the moment, but he also knew he had to have reinforcements.  He called for volunteers to ride through the blizzard and through the ring of blood-crazed Indians for help.  And Portugee Phil Phillips volunteered.

            Now, this man was not in the Army.  He was not under orders.  He valued his life as much as any man.  But something in his mind or his heart made him stand up and say that he thought he could do it.

            He took the garrison commander’s horse, a magnificent Kentucky hunter, and plunged into the swirling snow.  The wind cut his face; the sleet froze in his nostrils.  The horse’s hoof beats rang on frozen rivers or were muffled by drifts four feet deep.  He did not dare stop for rest or food.  All day and all night he struggled on until he came at dawn to another outpost, Fort Reno.

            But Reno had no telegraph, and no troops it could spare.  So, with a fresh horse, Phillips plunged on.  Not far from Reno a band of Indians chased him, but he outrode them.  On he went, all day and all night, until he reached Horseshoe Station.

            Here there was a telegraph, and a message was sent to Laramie.  But Phillips was afraid that the wires might be down (as indeed they were) and that the message might not get through.  So again he hurled himself into the storm.  On and on, hour after agonizing hour.  That night, a dying horse stumbled up to the gates of Laramie.  The rider slid off, a grotesque, show-encrusted figure.  Men ran to help him, but he waved them off.  Not until he had handed his dispatches to the commanding officer did his iron will falter.  Then he fell unconscious to the floor.  Within hours, troops were on their way to Fort Kearny.

            Three days and three nights.  Two hundred and thirty-six miles under conditions that would have killed most men.  Two chances to give up with honor and safety – both rejected.

            When you read or hear of something like this, doesn’t a kind of thrill go shivering down your spine?  It does down mine.  Doesn’t it make you feel a little ashamed of your preoccupation with security and comfort and safety and convenience?  It does me.  Can’t we modern Americans, by disciplining our minds and bodies, reach back and recapture a part of this magnificent heritage of ours?

Sin, Sex and Self-control, N. V. Peale, page 163-165