Daniel "Walking Tree" Logan  (Tracker)   Daniel has recently moved to Washington to live with his Uncle Paul, who works at the National Zoo. Daniel is a Chippewa (Ojibwa) Indian from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where the snows begin in October and end in May. Ever since the tribe opened its big casino in the UP, Danny's mother has been worried that her son will lose the old traditions and be corrupted by gambling and drinking. She has sent Danny to her brother to protect him from this. Although Danny, 15, misses his life in Michigan, especially the ice hockey that he shares with his friends there, he is fascinated by the city, and even more fascinated by the creatures who inhabit the zoo, where he spends as many hours as he can each week. This gives Danny a chance to see the zoo animals up close, and to practice his private passion for tracking. Dan likes to pretend that he is living in the United States before Europeans ever arrived. When he looks up at the rocky hills which surround the zoo, he imagines villages of Powhatan Indians.

Danny knows he's handsome, with strong features and black hair over thick, black brows, but he doesn't really care much what people think of him. The only real friend of his own age that he's made since he moved to Washington is a kid by the name of Trickster, whose passion is skateboarding and who is teaching Danny how to fly on wheels. Dan loves the feeling of skimming downhill on a skateboard almost as much as he loves the feel of ice under his blades. The most secret part of Dan Logan though, something he has never even told his mother, is that, since he was a little kid he has had a dream guide, an old and horribly disfigured man who calls himself Tsquallane. Danny has never seen this name in the history books he's read, but he's pretty sure the Grandfather is somebody important. When Danny was little, the old man would come and tell him stories of a time when Dan's people, the Ojibwa, lived all up and down the Eastern part of the country. Now that he's older, Danny seldom sees Tsquallane except in dreams, Nonetheless, the old man is as real to Dan as the people around him are. Tsquallane is his teacher and friend.