No regard of course was paid to any rights of the natives, who as a matter of fact were dying out rapidly from the effects of bad alcohol and epidemic diseases.
His motive was to establish large colonies of stalwart Highlanders as the tenants of a Chartered Company.

Alexander Mackenzie had already called the north-west country "New Caledonia".

Lord Selkirk wished to make it so in its population.
Already he had been instrumental in establishing a Scottish colony on Prince Edward's Island,[3] which, after some difficulties at the beginning, had soon begun to prosper.

Two or three years later he came to Montreal, and there collected all the information he could obtain from the partners in the North-west Company regarding the prospects of trade and colonization in the far west.

In the year 1811 he had managed to acquire the greater part of the shares in the Hudson's Bay Company, and, placing himself at its head, he sent out his first hundred Highlanders and Irish to form a feudatory colony in the Red River district (the modern Manitoba).