The Loyalists Arrive: New Homes on First Nations Lands

Starting again

Picture a family in 1783: they have lost their house, their farm and their friends because they stayed loyal to Britain. They sail north with a few trunks of belongings and arrive in a forest where nothing is built yet. Winter is coming.

In Grade 3 you learned that Loyalists settled in places like Kingston and Niagara. Now we look more closely at who they were, what it cost them, and whose land they settled on.

Who were the Loyalists?

Between 80 000 and 100 000 Loyalists eventually left the United States. About half came to British North America. They were very diverse:

• farmers, soldiers, merchants and professionals;
• people of English, Scottish, Irish, German and Dutch backgrounds;
• Black Loyalists, about 3 000 or more, who had won their freedom by joining the British (Lesson 11);
• Haudenosaunee and other First Nations allies, about 2 000 people;
• and, sadly, enslaved Black people whom white Loyalists brought with them. A British law of 1790 let Loyalists bring enslaved people into the colonies without paying a tax on them.

Where did they go?

• Maritimes (more than 30 000): so many came that Britain created a new colony, New Brunswick, in 1784. Cape Breton also became a separate colony that year.
• Present-day Ontario (about 7 500): along the St. Lawrence River, the Bay of Quinte, around Cataraqui (Kingston) and Niagara.
• Present-day Quebec (about 2 000): for example in the Gaspé and around Sorel.

The new arrivals in the west of Quebec wanted British laws and land they owned outright, not the seigneurial system. This will lead to the Constitutional Act of 1791 (Lesson 12).

Hard beginnings

• Many lived in tents or rough huts at first.
• The government gave land grants, tools, seed and food rations for a few years. Officers received more land than ordinary soldiers.
• Families had to clear forests by hand to plant crops. The first winters were hard.
• Many had lost property in the United States. They could file claims with the British government for compensation. Women filed claims too, sometimes as widows, describing what they had lost.
• In 1789, Governor Lord Dorchester (formerly Guy Carleton) let Loyalists add "UE" (for Unity of the Empire) after their names.

Whose land?

The Loyalists settled on First Nations lands. Following the Royal Proclamation's rule, British officials made land agreements in 1783 and 1784 with the Mississauga (Anishinaabe) north of Lake Ontario to open land for Loyalists and for the Six Nations. The Mississauga often understood these agreements differently from the British, especially about how much land was involved and what it meant to share it. Some of these agreements are still the subject of land claims today.

New homes for Haudenosaunee allies

The Haudenosaunee had lost their homelands in New York. The British made two grants:

• Tyendinaga: in 1784, Mohawk families led by John Deseronto settled on the Bay of Quinte. Today this is the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte community at Tyendinaga.
• Grand River: the Haldimand Proclamation of 25 October 1784 granted the Six Nations land six miles (about 10 km) deep on each side of the Grand River, from its mouth to its source. Joseph Brant led many families there. Today Six Nations of the Grand River is one of the largest First Nations communities in Canada by population, but it holds only a small part of the original grant, and Six Nations continues to pursue its land claims.