Ordered West: The Civil War Exploits of Charles A. Curtis

During the Civil War, Charles Curtis served in the 5th United States Infantry on the New Mexico and Arizona frontier. He spent his years from 1862 to 1865 on garrison duty, interacting with Native Americans, both hostile and friendly. Years after his service and while president of Norwich University, Curtis wrote an extensive memoir of his time in the Southwest. This memoir was serialized and published in a New England newspaper and so remained unknown, until now.

In addition to his keen observations of daily life as a soldier serving in the American Southwest, Curtis’s reminiscences include extensive descriptions of Arizona and New Mexico and detail his encounters with Indians, notable military figures, eccentrics, and other characters from the Old West. Among these many stories readers will find Curtis’s accounts of meeting Kit Carson, the construction of Fort Whipple, and expeditions against the Navajo and Apache.

In Ordered West, editors Alan D. Gaff and Donald H. Gaff have pulled together the pieces of Curtis’s story and assembled them into a single narrative. Annotated with footnotes identifying people, places, and events, the text is lavishly illustrated throughout with pictures of key figures and maps. A detailed biographical overview of Curtis and how his story came to print is also included.