In his regime the Grasshoppers came and did their destructive work, but the French people nicknamed him "Governor Sauterelle," Grasshopper Governor, for, says the historian of this decade he was so called, "because he proved as great a destroyer within doors as the grasshoppers in the fields." Lord Selkirk had been a most generous and sympathetic founder to his Scottish Colony.

He was not only proprietor of the whole Red River Valley, but he felt himself responsible for the support and comfort of his Colonists.

He had to begin with supplying food, clothing, implements, arms and ammunition to his settlers.

He had erected buildings for shelter and a store house and fort for the protection of them and their goods.

He had supplied, in a Colony shop, provisions and all requisites to be purchased by his settlers and on account of their poverty to be charged to their individual accounts.
George Simpson, who was the new Governor of the United Hudson's Bay Company, was for two years Macdonell's contemporary, and he in one of his letters says: "Macdonell is, I am concerned to say, extremely unpopular, despised and held in contempt by every person connected with the place, he is accused of partiality, dishonesty, untruth and drunkenness,--in short, by a disrespect of every moral and elevated feeling." Alexander Ross says of him, "The officials he kept about him resembled the court of an Eastern Nabob, with its warriors, serfs, and varlets, and the names they bore were hardly less pompous, for here were secretaries, assistant secretaries, accountants, orderlies, grooms, cooks and butlers." Satrap Macdonell held high revels in his time.