European settlement in central Canada was quite limited before 1775, amounting to only a few families in the area. However, in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, the area saw an influx of settlers, known as the United Empire Loyalists; American colonists who either refused to accept being divorced from the Crown, or who felt unwelcome in the new republic of the United States. A number of loyalists fled from the United States to the mostly unsettled lands north of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario; some had fought in the British Army and were paid with land in the region.