The British posts along the Great Lakes, including Carleton Island, Oswego, and Fort Niagara, attracted Loyalists from the back country in large numbers. A little colony of refugees sprang up on Carleton Island; many Loyalists were registered at Oswego while pass ing into Ontario to settle; and in the fall of 1775 Fort Niagara became the rendezvous of those coming in to join Butler's Rangers, a corps that comprised eight full companies in 1779. Brant and the Six Nation Indians also operated from this centre. Sullivan's raid up the Genesee River increased the number of savages at the post to more than 5,000. A Loyalist settlement was begun on the Canadian side of the Niagara River in 1780, which spread round the shores of the entire Niagara Penin sula and beyond by 1791. Both banks of the Grand River were colonized by the Mohawks and representatives of other tribes. At the west end of Lake Erie, Detroit was the head quarters of Tory refugees and the Wyandot and other Indian tribes. Here Lieutenant Governor Hamilton embodied the Detroit Vol unteers, who gained leadership when Capt. Alexander McKee, Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott and several other Tory conspirators came in from Fort Pitt in the spring of 1778.
Hamilton had been sending raiding parties to the upper Ohio and promising land bounties to those who would join in the King's defense. These measures seem to have led the Loyalists of the frontier to associate for the purpose of aiding the British cause. However, numbers of the plotters were apprehended, and others were suspected, including the officers in the Indian Department at Fort Pitt, namely, McKee and Girty, and Elliott who was an Indian trader. At length, in March 1778, they fled to Detroit, where they were given employment in the In dian Department. Girty now became the in stigator of war parties, which harried the frontier and gathered in adherents of the Crown. When peace returned the colonization of the region east of the Detroit River began. The Kings ships brought in without charge dis banded Loyalists, and others had only to cross the river, as at Niagara. Within a few years three townships on the lake front, four on the river Thames, and extensive tracts along the Detroit and Saint Clair rivers were settled by willing exiles from the neighboring republic. See also LOYALISTS IN CANADA.