Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf: A Memoir

Summary

In Raymond Kaquatosh’s award-winning coming of age story, “Little Hawk” shares his life journey—a story that is wise and irreverent, often funny, and in the end, deeply moving.

“Little Hawk” was born Raymond Kaquatosh in 1924 on Wisconsin’s Menominee Reservation. The son of a medicine woman, Ray spent his Depression-era boyhood immersed in the beauty of the natural world and the traditions of his tribe and his family. After his father’s death, eight-year-old Ray was sent to an Indian boarding school in Keshena. There he experienced isolation and despair, but also comfort and kindness. 

Upon his return home, Ray remained a lonely boy in a full house until he met and befriended a lone timber wolf. The unusual bond they formed would last through both their lifetimes. As Ray grew into a young man, he left the reservation more frequently. Yet whenever he returned—from school and work, from service in the Marines, and finally from postwar Wausau with his future wife—the wolf waited.

About the Author

RAYMOND CLAUD KAQUATOSH (1924–2017) was born in Neopit, Wisconsin. He spent his early years on the Menominee Indian Reservation and at the Menominee Boarding School at Keshena. Ray served in the US Marine Corps in World War II and the Korean War and later attended high schools in Keshena, Wausau, and Stevens Point; Milwaukee Area Technical College; the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; and the University of Wisconsin Law School. In August 1947 he became one of the first Menominee Indians to earn a pilot’s certificate.