other Shawanese chiefs came to pay him a visit
at York, (Toronto), and were hospitably treated, the great and good
Kakinathucca receiving substantial testimony of the gratitude of the
man he had saved from a death of torture.

Ridout's memorandum of the fate of the other prisoners is terribly
significant: "Samuel Purviance, Killed; Barland, Killed; Wm. R.
Watson, burnt; James Black, beat to death; Symonds, burnt; Ferguson,
sold for corn; a negro woman unharmed."

CHAPTER III

AFTER THE PEACE

Early in the summer of 1782, Haldimand received orders from Sir Guy
Carleton then in New York to act only on the defensive. This was due
to the negotiations for peace being on the way, and from that time it
may fairly be said that Canada was at peace.

One slave felt the movement in the air. This was Plato, an old Negro
slave who had been taken in Carleton's operations against Fort George
in 1780 and brought to Montreal where he entered the service of St.
Luc, a personage in those days. Plato had belonged to a Mr. Stringer
who, the slave always asserted, never joined the rebels. But when, on
November 3, 1782, there was made by the Commissary of Prisoners at
Quebec a return of the prisoners who had requested to remain in the
province, Plato's name appeared in the list. The next year he changed
his mind and on July, 17, 1783, he presented a petition to Haldimand
asking him to "excuse these few lines from a slave who would wish to
go again to his own Master and Mistress." He added: "The Gentleman I
am now living with Mr. St. Luc says he is very willing to let me go
with the first party that sets out from here" (Montreal).[1] Another
Negro slave Roger Vaneis (Van Ness) who had also been taken at Fort
George declined to go. He was living with Lieutenant Johnson and was
to have his freedom on serving for a time already about completed.[2]

The declaration of peace, however, brought many more slaves into
Canada. Even before the treaty was signed some of those who had kept
their faith to England's crown and desired to live and die under the
old flag made their way to the north. After the peace when the cause
was lost, many thousands came. Many of these had been slaveholders and
they brought their slaves with them. Some settled in what was
afterwards Lower Canada in Sorel and elsewhere, some in the upper
country, around Cornwall, Kingston, and Niagara, and a very few
crossed the river at Detroit.[3]

Returns made about the