Although the action of this Indian story turns on physical combat and the flight-and-pursuit motif, its theme is religious. The novel opens in July of 1812 on the partly wooded prairies of western Michigan known as "oak openings." Four men, all strangers to each other, meet in apparent amity and talk together. Two of these men are Indians: Elksfoot, an elderly Pottawattamie, and Pigeonswing, a young Chippewa. The other two are white men: Benjamin Boden, a bee-hunter and honey merchant from Pennsylvania, and Gershom Waring, an alcoholic trader from New England. In the story's first episode Boden shows his three new acquaintances the scientific method he practices for locating hives of wild bees. He uses simple triangulation, releasing two honey-laden bees at points 1,600 feet apart and then observing closely the direction of their respective flights; where their lines of flight intersect, there will be their hive.