author
Charles A. (Charles Albert) Curtis
1835–1907
A soldier, teacher, and memoirist, he turned his years in the Civil War and the American West into vivid firsthand storytelling. His best-known work, Captured by the Navajos, draws on experiences that gave his writing an unusual sense of immediacy.
1 Audiobook
Captured by the Navajos
by Charles A. (Charles Albert) Curtis
About the author
Born in Hallowell, Maine, in 1835, Charles A. Curtis studied at Norwich University and Bowdoin College before serving in the Civil War. He later remained in the regular army until 1870, and his career also included teaching military science and leading Norwich University as its president for a time.
Curtis is remembered as a writer whose work grew directly out of lived experience. His most familiar book, Captured by the Navajos, is a memoir-like adventure rooted in his time in the Southwest, and library and archival records also connect him with later recollections of army life and the wartime frontier.
He died in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1907. Today, his writing offers readers a personal window into nineteenth-century military life, the Civil War era, and the landscapes of the early American West.