1 08 PYGMY SPERM WHALE PIERS. 



died about 25 years ago, aged 84 years; and old Soolian Bill 

 had formerly belonged to Cape Breton Island and now lives on 

 the Truro reservation, aged about 97 years.* 



Noel Jeddore told Lone-cloud that about fifty years ago, say 

 about 1870, he and other Indians were encamped on a small 

 island called by the Indians U p-quaw' -we-kunk. or "Bark-camp 

 Island", off West Medford, on the south side of the entrance to 

 Pereau Creek, in Minas Basin, Kings Co., N. S., when a school 

 of about a dozen cetaceans became stranded on a mudflat there. 

 The Indians examined them and got some of the flesh for 

 food, and he said that the cooked back-fin was much relished by 

 them. The animals were about 12 or 15 feet long, coloured 

 black, and had a small dorsel-fin. Such cetaceans had never 

 before or afterwards been seen by Jeddore and his companions, 

 but he had heard from other older Indians that such animals 

 had occurred years previously, and that they had been called 

 by the Micmacs Ded-men-ak-paj-j'et, from the blunt apparancee 

 of their head. This word resembles an old Micmac name ap- 

 plied to another rare cetacean which once occurred here, Ded- 

 men-ak.-part, which means "head cut off sqijarely," not merely 

 "blunt-head." Further reference will be made to this latter 

 animal when I come to write of the true Sperm Whale. (See 

 page 1 \1). 



Old Soolian Bill very recently told Lone-cloud that he 

 also had seen the cetacean which they call Ded-men-ak.-paj-jet, 

 and said it occurred in the same season when the others were 

 taken off West Medford. About fifty years or more ago, 

 he states, a number of sea animals of the kind seen at West 

 Medford came ashore in a "gut" of water near the Indian 

 reservation at Whycocomagh, St. Patrick's Channel, Bras d'Or 

 Lakes, Cape Breton Island. f Bill and other Indians examin- 



*The well-known and respected Micmic I idian, William Prosper, usually known as 

 "Soolian Bill," died at the Truro Reservation o> 3rd April, 1923, and it was claimed that 

 he was o e hundred and o e years of age. The lame Soolian is evidently a corruption of 

 the French name Guillaume (William). He was born at Bay of Islands. Newfou dla d, and 

 came to Whycocomagh, Cape Breton, about 1848, removing to Dartmouth, opposite Halifax, 

 in 1800, the year the Prince of Wales was i i Nova Scotia. About 1888 he finally 

 we t to Truro. If he came to Halifax in 1800, as stated, the date of the occurrence of the 

 above-me tioned cetacean at Whycocomagh must nhave been prior to that year. 



tit may be meati med t'lat at tlie same time tliat these cetaceans came ashore at Whycoro- 

 mag':i, l*/ i very lar^e w.'iale-t (Micmac Boot-up, name f >r any largis whale) came in at the same 

 place and one ran a ih )re and was killed bv the Indians with a scythe-blade on the end of a 

 p )Ie. .Sool.an Bill saw it, ■and he said it made a great comnintion with its very lonK fins, so 

 t'lat one had t > be careful in approaching it. It was towed to .\r';chat, Rich. Co., and there 

 the blubber was removed. It is n it rep irted whether it had a b:ick-fin or not. Probably it 

 was the Humpback Whale {Megaptera nodosa). 



