The torture began at midnight, and the screams of the wretched victim were heard until daylight.

[Footnote: McBride, I., 88.] Difficulties Discriminating between Hostile and Friendly Indians.
Until this year the war was not general.

One of the most bewildering problems to be solved by the Federal officers on the Ohio was to find out which tribes were friendly and which hostile.

Many of the inveterate enemies of the Americans were as forward in professions of friendship as the peaceful Indians, were just as apt to be found at the treaties, or lounging about the settlements; and this widespread treachery and deceit made the task of the army officers puzzling to a degree.

As for the frontiersmen, who had no means whatever of telling a hostile from a friendly tribe, they followed their usual custom and lumped all the Indians, good and bad, together; for which they could hardly be blamed.
Even St.Clair, who had small sympathy with the backwoodsmen, acknowledged [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., 58.] that they could not and ought not to submit patiently to the cruelties and depredations of the savages; "they are in the habit of retaliation, perhaps without attending precisely to the nations from which the injuries are received," said he.