Side by side with this Macdonell immigration, may be noted an abortive immigration scheme for Upper Canada, which was not British and was later in time than the War of American Independence, but which had something in common with the advent of the Loyalists. This was an attempt to form a French Royalist settlement in Upper Canada under Count Joseph de Puisaye, ‘ci devant Puisaye the much enduring man and Royalist’,[183] a French emigré who had taken a leading part in the disastrous landing at Quiberon Bay in 1795. In or about 1797 he seems to have made a proposal to the British Government that they should send out a number of the Royalist refugees to Canada. The projected settlement was to be on military and feudal lines. ‘The same measure must be employed as in founding the old colony of Canada.... It was the soldiery who cleared and prepared the land for our French settlements of Canada and Louisiana.’ The writer of the above had evidently in mind the measures taken in the days of Louis XIV to colonize New France, and the planting out of the Carignan-Salières Regiment.[184] The scheme, it was anticipated, would commend itself to the Canadians in view of the community of race, language and religion, while to the British Government its value would consist in placing ‘decided Royalists in a country where republican principles and republican customs are becoming leading features’, i. e. on the frontiers of the United States. In July, 1798, the Duke of Portland wrote to the Administrator of Upper Canada on the subject, evidently contemplating the possibility of a considerable emigration to Canada of French refugees then living in England, of whom de Puisaye and about forty others, who were to embark in the course of the summer, would be the forerunners. The Duke laid down that de Puisaye and his company were to be treated as American Loyalists in the matter of allotment of land. William Windham, Pitt’s Secretary for War, also wrote, introducing de Puisaye to the Administrator as being personally well-known to himself, and explaining that the object of the scheme was ‘to provide an asylum for as many as possible of those whose adherence to the ancient laws, religion, and constitution of their country has rendered them sacrifices to the French Revolution’, to select by preference those who had served in the Royalist armies, to allow them to have a settlement of their own ‘as much as possible separate from any other body of French, or of those persons speaking French, who may be at present in America, or whom Government may hereafter be disposed to settle there’, and by this comparative isolation, as well as by giving them some element of military and feudal discipline, to preserve to them the character ‘of a society founded on the principles of reverence for religion and attachment to monarchy’. The scheme was born out of due time. The coming century and the New World were not the time and place for reviving feudal institutions. But on paper it was an attractive scheme. Side by side with the British Loyalists who had been driven out of the newly-formed American republic, would be settled French Loyalists whom the Revolution had hunted from France. Their loyalty and their sufferings for their cause would commend them to their British fellow colonists: their kinship in race, religion, and language would commend them to the French Canadians, who in turn had little sympathy with a France that knew not Church or King.

The place selected for the settlement was between Toronto and Lake Simcoe. It was chosen as being roughly equidistant from the French settlements in Lower Canada and those on the Detroit river, and as being near the seat of government, Toronto then York, and consequently within easy reach of assistance and well under control. Here a township was laid out and called Windham. De Puisaye and his party arrived at Montreal in October, 1798, and in the middle of November de Puisaye himself was at York, while his followers remained through the winter at Kingston. It was a bad time of year for starting a new settlement in Upper Canada, and possibly this was one of the reasons why it failed from the first. Another was that de Puisaye, who seems to have formed a friendship with Joseph Brant,[185] divided the small band of emigrants and went off himself to form a second settlement on or near the Niagara river. The scheme in short never took root: the emigrants or most of them went elsewhere; the name Windham went elsewhere and is now to be found in Norfolk county of Ontario. De Puisaye went back to London after the Peace of Amiens, and the project for a French Royalist colony in Upper Canada passed into oblivion.[186]

White Loyalists were not the only residents within the present boundaries of the United States who expatriated themselves or were expatriated in consequence of the War of Independence, and who settled in Canada. It has been seen that the Six Nation Indians had in the Loyalty of the Six Nation Indians and their settlement in Canada. main been steadily on the British side throughout the war, and that prominent among them were the Mohawks led by Joseph Brant. When peace was signed containing no recognition or safeguard of the country of the Six Nations or of native rights, the Indians complained with some reason that their interests had been sacrificed by Great Britain. Under these circumstances Governor Haldimand offered them lands on the British side of the lakes; and a number of them—more especially the Mohawks—permanently changed their dwelling-place still to remain under their great father, the King of England.

There were two principal settlements. One was on the Bay of Quinté, west of Kingston, where some of the Mohawks took up land side by side with the disbanded Rangers, in whose company they had fought in the war, and where the township Tyendenaga recalled the Indian name of Brant. A larger and more important settlement was on the Grand river, also called Ours or Ouse, flowing into Lake Erie due west of the Niagara river. Here Haldimand, by a proclamation dated the 25th of October, 1784, found homes for these old allies of England, the land or part of it having, by an agreement concluded in the previous May, been bought for the purpose from the Mississauga Indians. The proclamation set forth that His Majesty had been pleased to direct that, ‘in consideration of the early attachment to his cause manifested by the Mohawk Indians, and of the loss of their settlement which they thereby sustained, a convenient tract of land under his protection should be chosen as a safe and comfortable retreat for them and others of the Six Nations who have either lost their settlements within the territory of the American states or wish to retire from them to the British;’ and that therefore, ‘at the desire of many of these His Majesty’s faithful allies’, a tract of land had been purchased from the Indians between the Lakes Ontario, Huron and Erie, possession of which was authorized to the Mohawk nation and such other of the Six Nation Indians as wished to settle in that quarter, for them and their posterity to enjoy for ever.

The lands allotted were defined in the proclamation as ‘six miles deep from each side of the river, beginning at Lake Erie and extending in that proportion to the head of the said river’. Here, in the present counties of Brant and Haldimand, many tribesmen of the Six Nations settled. Brant county and its principal town Brantford recall the memory of the Mohawk leader, and such villages as Cayuga, Oneida, and Onondaga testify that other members of the old confederacy, in addition to the Mohawks, crossed over to British soil. Within a few years difficulties arose as to the intent of the grant, the Indians, headed by Brant, wishing to sell some of the lands; a further and more formal document, issued by Governor Simcoe in 1793, did not settle the question; and eventually a large part of the area included in the original grant was parted with for money payments which were invested for the benefit of the Indians. A report made in July, 1828, and included in a Parliamentary Blue Book of 1834[187], stated that the number of the Indian settlers on the Grand river was at that date under 2,000 souls: that ‘they are now considered as having retained about 260,000 acres of land, mostly of the best quality. Their possessions were formerly more extensive, but large tracts have been sold by them with the permission of H. M.’s Government, the moneys arising from which sales were either funded in England or lent on interest in this country. The proceeds amount to about £1,500 p.a.’.

Thus a large number of the Six Nation Indians adhered to the English connexion and left their old homes for ever: most of them became members of the Church of England, and the first church built in the Province of Ontario is said to have been one for the Mohawks.[188] In the second American war, as in the first, they remained faithful as subjects and allies; and to this day the descendants of the once formidable confederacy hold fast to the old-time covenant which their forefathers made with the English King.