Alexander MacLennan was born in 1871 in Toronto and grew up in the Scottish Highlands, where he trained as a baker. He reached Tierra del Fuego around 1895 and became foreman of Primera Argentina, José Menéndez's first big estancia on the Argentine side of the island. In 1897 a Selk'nam arrow wounded him; he later wore the arrowhead as a pin.
They called him Chancho Colorado, the Red Pig, and the name is tied to some of the worst stories of the Selk'nam genocide. Almost all reach us second-hand. José María Borrero's book La Patagonia trágica says he invited a Selk'nam group to a peace banquet on Santo Domingo beach, got them drunk and had men on the hills open fire. Federico Echeuline, of Selk'nam descent, remembered it this way: "To put in sheep, they killed Indians!" Luis Garibaldi, whose mother was Selk'nam, told the anthropologist Anne Chapman how at Cabo Peñas the high tide trapped people against the cliff; the historian José Luis Alonso Marchante speaks of about 17 dead.
In 1907 Menéndez gave him an engraved watch: "Recuerdo de José Menéndez a su buen Colaborador Alex McLennan", a keepsake for his good assistant. He died in Punta Arenas on 5 June 1917 and is buried in the municipal cemetery.
