Jerry Lonecloud

Who was Jerry Lonecloud?

Jerry Lonecloud was an entertainer, ethnographer and medicine man for the Mi'kmaq people in Nova Scotia. He wrote the first Mi'kmaq memoir, which is entitled "Tracking Dr. Lonecloud:Showman to Legend Keeper". Historian Ruth Holmes Whitehead wrote, "Ethnographer of the Micmac nation could rightly have been his epitaph, his final honour."

In the 1880s, Lonecloud adopted the name "Dr. Lonecloud" during his career with American Medicine Shows and Wild West Shows, including John Healy and Charles Bigelow’s Kickapoo Indian medicine, Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and the Kiowa Medicine Show.

As an ethnographer he worked extensively with historian and archivist Harry Piers.

He and his family was living at Tuff's Cove in Dartmouth during the Halifax Explosion. Two of his daughters were killed and he lost an eye. He died in Halifax in 1930.