John «Portugee» Phillips (Manuel Filipe Cardoso) was born at 28/04/1832 in Terras in the town of Lajes do Pico in the Island of Pico, Azores. He was the fourth son of Filipe and Maria José Cardoso.
We don’t know a lot about him, but in 1861 he was in the mines of Oro Fino and Salmon River, here today is Idaho, and in 1866 he was in the north of Wyoming in fort Kearny and there he cutted wood, drove cars, but, the americans were “prisioners” inside the fort due to the amount of native americans outside the fort.
Did you know that in the face of a dangerous situation, this Azorean hero volunteered to take information to the General Staff of the Army in Omaha and to General Ulysses S. Grant in Washington via telegraph? To do this he traveled nearly 200 miles (322 km) going to Horseshoe Station (arrived on Christmas morning), and then went to Fort Laramie to provide other messages, and then returned to Fort Kearny. This journey to Fort Laramie lasted 4 days, and the azorean experienced cold temperatures (-20ºC / -4 ºF) and even suffered an ambush by the native americans!
The story of life of John «Portugee» Phillips is of an Azorean in the Wild West and represents the people of these times in the United States of America that we are so used to see in Western films!
Last modified: 26 de January, 2022
