[7] Additionally Alexander played a role in the development of Métis identity by "giving them shape and direction".
[9] During the Pemmican War Alexander dispatched Cuthbert Grant and 25 Métis to plunder the Hudson's Bay Company's Brandon House.
However, this is based on a reading of one account, provided by James Sutherland, in which he stated “it is said” that the North West Company gave the Métis peoples the Métis flag as a gift for their actions against the Red River Colony in Spring 1815, but made no mention of Macdonell as the source of the flag.
[10] However, there is no corroborating evidence and it is potentially contradicted by contemporary eyewitness accounts from Colin Robertson, Lieutenant General Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, and Macdonell himself that do not describe a flag being given among the gifts given to the Métis by the North West Company before the flag was first recorded by Sutherland as being flown in October 1815.
[18] In 1819 a book titled A Narrative of the Transactions in the Red River Country from the commencement of the operations of the Earl of Selkirk till the summer of 1816 was published in London, United Kingdom under his name.