Born to Anglo-American parents on the Appalachian frontier but captured and adopted by Miami Indians at the age of thirteen, William Wells moved between two cultures all his life. Vilified by some historians for his divided loyalties, he remains relatively unknown, though he is worthy of comparison with such frontiersmen as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest is the first biography of this man-in-the-middle.

A servant of empire with deep sympathies for the people his country sought to dispossess, Wells married Chief Little Turtle's daughter and distinguished himself as a Miami warrior, an American spy, and an Indian agent whose multilingual skills made him a valuable interpreter. Author William Heath's examination of pioneer life in the Ohio Valley yields rich insights into Wells's career as well as broader events on the post-revolutionary American frontier, where Anglo-Americans pushing westward competed with the Indian nations of the Old Northwest.