White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650 – 1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Summary
The book tells a story about “how, over… two centuries [Europeans and Indians] constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes…” Mixture created new meanings and exchange and its eventual breakdown recreated the Indians as “alien, as exotic, as other.” A multitude of players – European and Indian – created what White defines as a Middle Ground: “…the place in between: in between cultures, peoples, and in between empires and the non-state world of villages. It is a place where many of the North American subjects and allies of empires lived. It is the area between the historical foreground of European invasion and occupation and the background of Indian defeat and retreat.” (X) It was defined by “creative misunderstanding.” For example, French learned to have success in the middle ground required behaving as “fathers” should – bestowing gifts, mediating disputed between children, counseling moderation. This accommodation took place because for long periods of time in large parts of the colonial world “whites could neither dictate to Indians nor ignore them.” They needed them for survival. “The result was an odd imperialism where mediation succeeded and force failed, where colonizers gave gifts to the colonized and patriarchal metaphors were the heart of politics” (143) However, French-Indian (Seven Year) War disrupted/altered relations. Anglo-Indian ties led increasingly to conflict that by the eve of the American Revolution murder and revenge (not mediation and accommodation) characterized relations. This was further exacerbated by expanding American settlement, who saw no need to accommodate their Algonquian neighbors.