a campaign that burned the villages of the Iroquois in New York State in 1779 the refugees fled to Fort Niagara and other British posts, and remained permanently in Canada. Land was granted to these allied Six Nations who had served on the British side during the American Revolution by the Haldimand Proclamation (1784). Haldimand had purchased a tract of land from the Mississaugas. The nature of the grant and the administration of land sales by Upper Canada and Canada is a matter of dispute. Between 1783 and 1812, fifteen land surrender treaties were concluded in Upper Canada. These involved one-time payments of money or goods to the Indigenous peoples. Some of the treaties spelled out designated reserve lands for the Indigenous peoples. Following the War of 1812, European settlers came in increasing numbers. The Indian Department focussed on converting the Indigenous peoples to abandon their old way of life and adopt agriculture. The treaties shifted from one-time payments in exchange to annual annuities from the sale of surrendered lands. Between 1825 and 1860, treaties were concluded for nearly all of the land-mass of the future Province of Ontario. In 1836, Manitoulin Island was designated as a reserve for dispossessed natives, but much of this was ceded in 1862. Loyalists and the land grant system Crown land policy to 1825 was multi-fold in the use of a "free" resource that had value to people who themselves may have little or no money for its purchase and for the price of settling upon it to support themselves and a create a new society. First, the cash-strapped Crown government in Canada could pay and reward the services and loyalty of the "United Empire Loyalists" who, originated outside of Canada, without encumbrance of debt by being awarded with small portions of land (under ) with the proviso that it be settled by those to which it was granted; Second, portions would be reserved for the future use of the Crown and the clergy that did not require settlement by which to gain control. Lt. Governor Simcoe saw this as the mechanism by which an aristocracy might be created, and that compact settlement could be avoided with the grants of large tracts of land to those Loyalists not required to settle on it as the means of gaining control. Assisted immigration The Calton weavers were a community of handweavers established in the community of