Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Chief Lonecloud

Chief Lonecloud discovered the quartz vein that led to the establishment of the Lone Cloud mine, but his gold prospecting was just a small part of his extraordinary life. Here is his story.

Lonecloud was born in 1854 in Belfast, Maine. His birth name was Germain Bartlett Alexis but he sometimes went by Jerry Bartlett, Jerry Lonecloud and his Mi’kmaw name, Slme’n Laksi (Haselmah Luxcey), according to author Ruth Holmes Whitehead who wrote “Tracking Doctor Lonecloud: Showman to Legend Keeper.” We refer to him here as Lonecloud because that is the name most associated with his prospecting work.

His parents were from Nova Scotia but were herbalists who travelled throughout Canada and the northeast United States, making and selling remedies.

When the American Civil War began, Lonecloud’s father joined the Union army. As one of the volunteers who tracked and captured John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, he went to New York in 1866 to collect his share of the reward money but was murdered there. Lonecloud’s mother died shortly afterwards in Vermont, leaving him to care for his sister and two younger brothers. He brought them home to Nova Scotia around 1869.

In Nova Scotia, he was making a living as a guide and logger when he was recruited for Healy and Bigelow’s Wild West Show, which toured the United States in the early 1880s. He portrayed a medicine man and was given the stage name Dr. Lone Cloud. (It is also said that his parents called him Lonecloud because there was just one cloud in the sky on the day he was born.)

Lonecloud also performed in the wild west show of Buffalo Bill, a folk hero who fought in the civil war. Buffalo Bill Cody became one of the first global celebrities as a result of his show and dime store novels about his life.

Lonecloud later formed his own touring company, the Kiowa Medicine Show, which played little towns throughout New England. It failed, but he later put together a show in the Maritimes, which, according to a letter in the Evening Mail on May 31, 1930, “was instructive. He recited the legends of his people. He recited history which, even in these enlightened days, is not found in our schoolrooms.”

The author of the letter, simply calling himself “Old Timer,” also claimed, “As a climax to his show, he was wont to swing by the braids, or ‘pigtails,’ which hung well below his shoulders, the two heaviest men in his audience. This is a fact substantiated by many who knew Lone Cloud in his hey-day. This feat, naturally, was followed by high-pressure salesmanship of Dr. Lone Cloud’s hair tonic.”

In 1890, Lonecloud moved to Liscomb Mills, Guysborough County, with his wife and children. There he worked as a prospector, herbalist, logger and hunting guide.

In the early 1900s, he discovered the Lone Cloud lead, a gold-bearing quartz vein in the Miller Lake gold district of Guysborough County. Gold was discovered in Miller Lake around 1900, and Department of Mines records say the Lone Cloud lead was being worked in 1903, so Lonecloud discovered it sometime in between.

According to the May 29, 1929, edition of the Evening Mail, “Lone Cloud still retains ownership of the large part of the southern dip [of the Lone Cloud lead], and will leave this evening to commence operations there. Lone Cloud is seventy-seven years of age, but still has the lure of gold in his veins.”

The Lone Cloud lead was worked intermittently until the late 1940s by various prospectors and companies. Most of the gold produced in the Miller Lake district was extracted from it.

Around 1910, Lonecloud moved to Halifax and became an advocate for the Mi’kmaq and was eventually elected sub chief for Halifax County.

He struck up a friendship with Harry Piers, then-curator of the Provincial Museum (called the Nova Scotia Museum today). Lonecloud worked with Piers to preserve Mi’kmaw oral histories, folk tales, and over 200 cultural and natural history specimens, including photographs, traditional clothing, birds, and plants. He also contributed to a wider knowledge of his language by teaching Piers Mi’kmaw placenames and vocabulary.

Piers described Lonecloud as "a man of considerable intelligence” who was “possessed of a fund of information….I always found him frank, loyal, and he had a razor-keen sense of humour. He was familiar with every brook, river and lake from Windsor to Canso.”

In 1917, Lonecloud was living with his wife and children in Tuft’s Cove (aka Turtle Grove), near the Narrows on Dartmouth’s waterfront. When the Halifax Explosion took place on December 6, two of his daughters, Rosie and Hannah, were killed. Lonecloud was in Kentville at the time, but he immediately travelled home when he heard about the tragedy. He walked from Windsor Junction when the relief train he was on was delayed.

Tuft’s Cove was obliterated by the Explosion. Nine of its 21 inhabitants were killed and all the survivors were seriously injured, according to Joyce Glasner’s “The Halifax Explosion: Heroes and Survivors.”

For a number of years in the 1920s, Halifax newspapers published Lonecloud’s predictions about seasonal weather, similar to the Farmer’s Almanac predictions, because he was seen as gaining special insight from the moon and nature. The March 1, 1929, edition of the Evening Mail reprinted his weather prediction from several months earlier and concluded, “That, as it turns out, was a pretty accurate forecast, and we are still getting the kind of weather predicted…Chief Lone Cloud knew what he was talking about.”

Lonecloud passed away on April 16, 1930, in Victoria General Hospital after an illness that reportedly lasted less than 24 hours. Interviewed by the Evening Mail after Lonecloud’s passing, Harry Piers said, “I had the greatest admiration for Lone Cloud and am grieved to hear of his death.”

The Miller Lake gold district produced only a modest amount of gold, but the reasons were mainly business-related, not geological. The companies working in it had insufficient capital and made bad business decisions.

Today, historical sites like Miller Lake have the potential to be mined profitably and environmentally-responsibly with modern science and engineering. That is why almost all the activity in Nova Scotia’s gold sector is at historical gold mines that still have the potential to return to production and create jobs.