When Europeans first arrived in the Great Lakes region, they found a complex network of allegiances and conflicts between fairly sophisticated groups who were far less interested in The White Man than in their own politics and rivalries. By considering the area’s colonial-era history from the perspective of the Odawa, who served as power brokers between the Europeans and other native groups but had their own agenda, the author provides a welcome change from the usual view that nothing much was going on here before the Europeans blundered in.