With regard to the settlement at Detroit, there is not
much evidence available. It was Haldimand's intention at
first to establish a large settlement there, but the
difficulties of communication doubtless proved to be
insuperable. In the event, however, some of Butler's
Rangers settled there. Captain Bird of the Rangers applied
for and received a grant of land on which he made a
settlement; and in the summer of 1784 we find Captain
Caldwell and some others applying for deeds for the land
and houses they occupied. In 1783 the commanding officer
at Detroit reported the arrival from Red Creek of two
men, 'one a Girty, the other McCarty,' who had come to
see what encouragement there was to settle under the
British government. They asserted that several hundred
more would be glad to come if sufficient inducements were
offered them, as they saw before them where they were
nothing but persecution. In 1784 Jehu Hay, the British
lieutenant-governor of Detroit, sent in lists of men
living near Fort Pitt who were anxious to settle under
the British government if they could get lands, most of
them being men who had served in the Highland and 60th
regiments. But it is safe to assume that no large number
of these ever settled near Detroit, for when Hay arrived
in Detroit in the summer of 1784, he found only one
Loyalist at the post itself. There had been for more than
a generation a settlement of French Canadians at Detroit;
but it was not until after 1791 that the English element
became at all considerable.

It has been estimated that in the country above Montreal