He had been an officer of the King's Royal Regiment of New York, and held the rank of Captain of the Canadian Militia.

This officer had a brother in the North-West Fur Company, John Macdonell, who, more than ten years before, had been in the service of his Company on Red River and whose Journal had no doubt fallen into the hands of his brother Miles.

He had written: "From the Forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers the plains are quite near the banks, and so extensive that a man may travel to the Rocky Mountains without passing a wood, a mile long.

The soil on the Red River and the Assiniboine is generally a good soil, susceptible of culture, and capable of bearing rich crops." He goes on to state, "that the buffalo comes to the fords of the Assinboil, besides in these rivers are plenty of sturgeon, catfish, goldeyes, pike and whitefish--the latter so common that men have been seen to catch thirty or forty a piece while they smoked their pipes." To reach this land of plenty, which his brother knew so well, Miles Macdonell became the leader of Lord Selkirk's Colonists.

He arrived in Great Britain in the year for the starting of the Colony, and immediately as being a Roman Catholic in religion went to the West of Ireland to recommend the Emigration scheme, obtain subscriptions of stock, and to engage workmen as Colonists.