Menominee Reservation native Raymond Kaquatosh, now in his 90s and living near Waupaca, is on a book tour that will bring him back to Keshena on Thursday.
Kaquatosh will talk about his memoir, “Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf,” in a free, public program at 11 a.m. Thursday in the Cultural Learning Center at the College of Menominee Nation, N172 State Highway 47/55.
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, publisher of the book and e-book edition, calls the work “a rare first-person narrative of a Menominee Indian’s coming of age” and “a story that is wise and irreverent, often funny, and in the end, deeply moving.” It was named a Midwest Connections Picks memoir for November 2014.
Kaquatosh, who is Little Hawk, writes of his time on the Menominee Reservation from his birth in 1924 to a medicine woman through post-World War II years in Wausau, where the former Marine met his future wife. A counterpoint to the author’s coming of age story is his long friendship with a lone timber wolf that appeared at his childhood home. The wolf and mystical natural world of the Menominee Reservation provide compelling life lessons as the young man periodically leaves and returns to his tribal home.
Kaquatosh was born in Neopit and attended the Menominee Boarding School in Keshena. Following war time service in the U.S. Marine Corps, he married and studied at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and UW Law School. In 1947, he became one of the first Menominee Indians to earn a pilot’s certificate.
A book signing and opportunity to meet the author will follow the 11 a.m. discussion.
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