[siebert] loyalists AND SIX NATION INDIANS 113 



QUEENSTON 



There was doubtless a small settlement on the site of Queenston 

 before the transfer of transportation from the eastern side of the 

 River Niagara to the western side in 1790; but this transfer gave the 

 hamlet an importance which it had lacked before, and during 1791 

 the place made considerable growth. Two or three storehouses, a 

 stone blockhouse sheathed with iron, barracks for soldiers, an inn, 

 and some small houses sprang up simultaneously. Early in May 

 of this year the Land Board passed a resolution ordering the inhabit- 

 ants near the portage to move their fences as soon as they had gathered 

 their crops, and open a road from the new landing place to Chippawa 

 Creek. Within the next two months the Governor General received 

 proposals for the carriage of government stores over this portage. 

 One of these came from Philip Stedman, Jr., who had been the contrac- 

 tor for the same service on the right bank of the river, and the other was 

 submitted by Robert Hamilton, George Forsythe, John Burch, and 

 Archibald Cuninghame. The Loyalist inhabitants in this vicinity 

 well understood that their interests were directly concerned, and on 

 June 20th petitioned the Land Board to support the tender of Hamil- 

 ton and his associates, on the score that the local settlement would 

 derive essential advantages from having the transportation of goods 

 conducted as a general enterprise, instead of having it monopolized 

 by a single person. The plan of Hamilton and his friends was to 

 emplo>^ in regular turn all responsible members of the colony who 

 should ofïer their services, but under the limitation that no person 

 could have more than two teams on the road at one time, unless press 

 of business required it. After examining witnesses the Land Board 

 recommended that the Governor General "grant the preference to 

 the settlement over any individual or set of men on the same terms 

 and the performance equally well secured." The matter was now 

 referred to the Committee for Inland Navigation and Commerce, 

 which also reported in favor of Hamilton and his associates, and these 

 men now received the contract at one shilling and eight pence (New 

 York currency) per quintal of 112 pounds.^ 



Doubtless, the commerce of Upper Canada was more or less injured 

 by the war now going on between the United States and the Western 

 Indians; but the testimony of travellers who visited Queenston in 

 1794, and later, does not indicate any such decline of trafhc, including 

 peltry and merchandise, as a recent writer attributes to this cause. 

 Thus, a gentleman who stopped at the "New Landing" in November, 

 1794, tells of vessels discharging their cargoes and taking on furs that 



1 Canniff, Settlement of Upper Canada, 528, 598; Niagara Hist. Soc, No. 

 26, 3-5. 



Sec. I and II, 1915—8 



