The Hunters' Lodge was the last of a series of secret organizations formed in 1838 in the United States during the Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada.
The organization arose in Vermont among Lower Canadian refugees (the eastern division or Frères chasseurs) and spread westward under the influence of Dr Charles Duncombe and Donald McLeod, leaders of the short lived Canadian Refugee Relief Association, and Scottish-born former Mayor of Toronto William Lyon Mackenzie, drawing in support from many different areas in North America and Europe.
[2] Lodges existed across Vermont, western New York, Ohio and Michigan with particularly active sites being Watertown, Oswego, Salina (now Syracuse), Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit.
In September 1838, 70 delegates from the western Hunters' Lodges attended a secret, week-long "Patriot Congress" in Cleveland, Ohio.
[4] The small party emerged in 1836 in New York with a platform emphasizing radical republicanism, an end to the "moneyed aristocracy", and "Free Banking".