Ordered West

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.

The recollections of Charles Curtis has to be one of the most significant documents relating to the history of the army in the Southwest to be uncovered in the last several decades. The descriptions of men such as Kit Carson and Manuel Chaves are little less than precious."" - Jerry D. Thompson, author of A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia and editor of Civil War in the Southwest: Recollections of the Sibley Brigade   ""This is a well-organized, coherent, interesting, and quite lucid memoir. Curtis’s experiences at the Camp at Los Valles and Fort Whipple, as well as his non-military encounters, are virtually unique for the period and add much to the value of the memoir."" - John P. Wilson, editor of From Western Deserts to Carolina Swamps: A Civil War Soldier's Journals and Letters Home and When the Texans Came: Missing Records from the Civil War in the Southwest, 1861-1862

Alan D. Gaff is an independent scholar and President of Historical Investigations. His previous books include Bayonets in the Wilderness, Blood in the Argonne, and On Many a Bloody Field.Donald H. Gaff is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Northern Iowa, and co-editor with Alan D. Gaff of A Corporal’s Story: Civil War Recollections of the Twelfth Massachusetts.