Germain Laski, trained in herbal medicine by his Mi'kmaw family, found adventure in the American medicine shows of the 1880s. He performed as Doctor Lonecloud in Healey and Bigelow's Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and his own Kiowa Medicine Show, for which he made the medicines. After he returned to Nova Scotia, Lonecloud worked as a guide and sold his herbal remedies. During his twenty-year friendship with Harry Piers, curator of the Nova Scotia Provincial Museum, he collected artefacts and specimens for the museum and shared his knowledge of Mi'kmaw culture. Between 1923 and 1929, he gave interviews to journalist Clara Dennis. In the 1990s, these interviews, recorded in Dennis's notebooks, came to the attention of Ruth Holmes Whitehead.

Tracking Doctor Lonecloud includes Lonecloud's life story in his own words â the earliest known Mi'kmaw autobiography. This memoir, painstakingly transcribed by Whitehead and augmented by her research, reveals both the showman and the carrier of Mi'kmaw legends.