80 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Mississauguas raised their crops of maize 

 and beans. ^ 



FORT NIAGARA AS A RENDEZVOUS FOR LOYALISTS AND INDIANS. 



From the very beginning of the Revolution LoyaHsts, or Tories, 

 from the Middle Colonies resorted to Fort Niagara, whither Captain 

 John Butler — himself a refugee from the Province of New York — 

 was sent by Sir Guy Carleton, governor general of Canada, in the 

 fall of 1775. The home of Butler had been at Johnstown in the 

 Mohawk Valley, a hotbed of loyalism, where the superintendent of 

 Indian affairs, Sir William Johnson, had lived until the close of his 

 life in 1774. Guy Johnson, Sir William's nephew and son-in-law, 

 now succeeded to the Indian superintendency, and Butler was serving 

 in the capacity of deputy to the new superintendent, while Joseph 

 Brant, the Mohawk chieftain and head of the Six Nations, was the 

 latter's secretary, being in turn aided by his sister Molly, who exer- 

 cised scarcely less influence among the Indians than Brant himself. 

 The battles of Lexington and Concord had stirred the Johnsons and 

 their friends in Tryon County to various activities in opposition 

 to the Whigs, or patriots, including the holding of a series of Indian 

 councils. Surveillance on the part of the Whigs kept them informed 

 of all these activities, and at length in August, 1775, Guy Johnson 

 together with his family, the Butlers, Colonel Daniel Claus, Gilbert 

 Tice, Barent Frey, two sons of Sir William, and 120 warriors and chiefs 

 of the Six Nations, fearing longer to remain in the Mohawk Valley, 

 took their departure from Oswego for Montreal by way of the St. 

 Lawrence. At Montreal the party was received in conference by 

 Governor Carleton, and Brant was given a commission in the British 

 army. It was in the November following that John Butler received 

 his orders to report for duty at Niagara . Evidently, he took with him 

 some of those who had accompanied him in his flight.^ 



Arriving at Niagara on November 17, Captain Butler took pre- 

 liminary measures at once : he set Loyalist emissaries at work gather- 

 ing information in the principal villages and mingling among the In- 

 dians. One of these, a young Philadelphian by the name of William 

 Caldwell, aided some British officers to escape from prison, and con- 



1 Kirby, Annals of Niagara, 8, 9, 11, 35; Severance, Old Trails of the Niagara 

 Frontier, 4, 8. 



2 Niagara Hist. Soc, No. 4, 2; Jubilee Hist, of Thorold, 12; Caniflf, Med. Pro- 

 fession in Upper Canada, 9; Van Tyne, Loyalists in the Am. Rev., 298; Cruikshank, 

 Butler's Rangers, 8-10, 16, 17, 24-27; Stone, Life of Joseph Brant, I, 51-54, 67, 68, 

 71-74, 84; Caniff, Settlement of Upper Canada, 74. 



