A persistent theme of the book is how Indigenous people accommodated European newcomers by drawing on aspects of colonial life and society, which they then adapted to their own uses and rules. This accommodation stemmed from the community-oriented view of the world common among Indigenous cultures, and it included the incorporation of everything from European goods to European religion.

Richter notes that Indigenous people often adapted European pots and other metal objects by melting them down and remaking them into more familiar and useful objects—appropriating the imported technology of metalworking for their own purposes. Later, as European trade networks grew, they began to reshape the material lives of Indigenous peoples in ways that the colonists could not have anticipated. Mass-manufactured wampum became a form of currency exchanged between Indigenous groups, and woolen blankets became an indispensable part of many Indigenous cultures. These changes occurred as Indigenous groups took from the colonists what was useful to them and adapted it to their own needs.

In conflicts, Indigenous groups and Europeans relied on one another as allies, and early American settlers sometimes found themselves conscripted into existing wars among Indigenous peoples. The marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe is an example of an attempted diplomatic alliance, as the Powhatan people sought to bring Europeans into their Indigenous world according to Indigenous norms.