Kateri Tekakwitha

Tekakwitha is the given name she received by her native Mohawk people. It translates to "She who bumps into things." She was born around 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon in northeastern New York. She was the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Kahenta, an Algonquin woman, who had been captured in a raid and then adopted and assimilated into the tribe. Kahenta had been baptized Catholic and educated by French missionaries in Trois-Rivières, east of Montreal. Mohawk warriors captured her and took her to their homeland. Kahenta eventually married Kenneronkwa. Tekakwitha was the first of their two children. A brother followed. Tekakwitha's original village was highly diverse. The Mohawk absorbed captured Native people of other tribes, particularly their competitors, the Huron, to replace people who died from warfare and diseases. When Tekakwitha was around four years old, her parents and her brother died of smallpox. Tekakwitha survived, but suffered from facial scars and impaired eyesight. Due to her scars, she wore head covering and cloths to cover them. The Jesuits' account of Tekakwitha said that she was a modest girl who avoided social gatherings and covered her head because of her scars. She was skilled at making clothing, weaving mats, preparing food and other traditional women's arts. As was the custom, she was pressured to think about marriage around age thirteen, but she refused. ==Upheaval and invasions==

Tekakwitha grew up in a period of upheaval, as the Mohawk interacted with French and Dutch colonists, who were competing in the lucrative fur trade. Trying to make inroads in Iroquois territory, the French attacked the Mohawk in present-day central New York in 1666. After driving the people from their homes, the French burned the three Mohawk villages. Tekakwitha, around ten years old, fled with her new family. After being defeated by the French forces, the Mohawk accepted a peace treaty that required them to tolerate Jesuit missionaries in their villages. The Jesuits established a mission near present-day Auriesville, New York. They spoke of Christianity in terms with which the Mohawk could identify. The Mohawk rebuilt Caughnawaga on the north bank of the river later named for them. (The present-day town of Fonda, New York developed just east of here in the mid-18th century). In 1667, when Tekakwitha was 11 years old, she met Jesuit missionaries Jacques Frémin, Jacques Bruyas, and Jean Pierron, who had come to the village. Her uncle opposed any contact with them because he did not want her to convert to Christianity. One of his older daughters had already become Catholic. In the summer of 1669, several hundred Mohican warriors, advancing from the east, launched an attack on Caughnawaga. Tekakwitha, at that point around 13 years old, joined other girls to help priest Jean Pierron tend to the wounded, bury the dead, and carry food and water. ==Feast of the Dead==

Later in 1669, the Haudenosaunee Feast of the Dead was convened at Caughnawaga. The remains of Tekakwitha's parents, along with others, were to be part of the ceremony. Father Pierron criticized the Feast of the Dead, but the assembled Haudenosaunee ordered him to be silent. Afterward, however, they relented and promised to give up the feast. ==Family pressures==

By the time Tekakwitha turned 17, around 1673, her adoptive mother and aunt tried to arrange her marriage to a young Mohawk man. Tekakwitha fled the cabin and hid in a nearby field and continued to resist marriage. Eventually, her aunts gave up their efforts to get her to marry. In the spring of 1674, at age eighteen, Tekakwitha met the Jesuit priest Jacques de Lamberville, who was visiting the village. In the presence of others, Tekakwitha told him her story and her desire to become a Christian. She started studying the catechism with him. ==Conversion and Kahnawake==

In his journal, Lamberville wrote about Tekakwitha in the years after her death. This text described her before she was baptized as a mild-mannered girl. Lamberville also stated that Tekakwitha did everything she could to practice her Catholic faith in a non-Catholic society, which often caused minor conflicts with her longhouse residents. The journal, however, does not mention violence toward Tekakwitha, while other sources do. Lamberville baptized Tekakwitha at the age of 19, on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1676. Tekakwitha was renamed "Catherine" after St. Catherine of Siena (Kateri was the Mohawk form of the name). She remained in Caughnawauga for another six months. Some Mohawks opposed her conversion and accused her of sorcery. Tekakwitha was said to have put thorns on her sleeping mat and lain on them while praying for her relatives' conversion and forgiveness. Piercing the body to draw blood was a traditional ritual practice of the Mohawk and other Haudenosaunee nations. Many of the priests in her community opposed it, as they were concerned about her already poor health. Tekakwitha reportedly pushed back against these concerns saying, "I will willingly abandon this miserable body to hunger and suffering, provided that my soul may have its ordinary nourishment." Around this time she also began a friendship with another woman named Marie Thérèse Tegaianguenta. The two of them tried to start a Native religious order, but Jesuits rejected that proposal. she could, owing to circumstances, never receive the consecration of virgins by a bishop. Nevertheless, the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins later took Kateri Tekakwitha as its patroness. ==Mission du Sault St-Louis: Kahnawake==

The Jesuits had founded Kahnawake for the religious conversion of Native people. When it began, the Natives built their traditional longhouses for residences and gatherings. They also built a longhouse to be used as a chapel by the Jesuits. As a missionary settlement, Kahnawake was at risk of being attacked by members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy who had not converted to Catholicism. Kahnawake was a village set up like normal Haudenosaunee villages, moving from location to location after running out of resources. The village was originally not wholly French, but with northward migration towards Canada started by the Five Nations, the village started to gain more Native members. The Five Nations all happened to start migrating north around the same time, without any communication between them. In Kahnawake, there was representation from multiple tribes, and when the French came there were people from different ethnicities. The village was recognized by New France, and given autonomy to deal with problems that would arise. They were also able to form a friendship with New York through this autonomy. There was fur trade in Kahnawake. The division between the French Church and the Natives was clear-cut in the village; there were few interactions between the two. Kahnawake was drawn into a war among the different tribes that lasted around two and a half years. Jesuit Missionaries Chauchetière and Cholenec Jesuit priests Claude Chauchetière and Pierre Cholenec played important roles in Tekakwitha's life. Both were based in New France and Kahnawake. Chauchetière was the first to write a biography of Tekakwitha in 1695, and Cholenec followed in 1696. In contrast, Cholenec stressed her virginity, perhaps to counter colonial stereotypes characterizing Indian women as promiscuous. ==Death and appearances==

Around Holy Week of 1680, friends noted that Tekakwitha's health was failing. When people knew she had but a few hours left, villagers gathered together, accompanied by the priests Chauchetière and Cholenec, the latter providing the last rites. Her smallpox scars were said to disappear. Tekakwitha purportedly appeared to three individuals in the weeks after her death; her mentor Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, her friend Marie-Therèse Tegaiaguenta, and Chauchetière. Anastasia said that, while crying over the death of her spiritual daughter, she looked up to see Tekakwitha "kneeling at the foot" of her mattress, "holding a wooden cross that shone like the sun." Marie-Thérèse reported that she was awakened at night by a knocking on her wall, and a voice asked if she were awake, adding, "I've come to say good-bye; I'm on my way to heaven." Marie-Thérèse went outside but saw no one; she heard a voice murmur, "Adieu, Adieu, go tell the father that I'm going to heaven." Chauchetière meanwhile said he saw Tekakwitha at her grave; he said she appeared in "baroque splendor; for two hours he gazed upon her" and "her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy." Chauchetière had a chapel built near Kateri's gravesite. By 1684, pilgrimages had begun to honor her there. The Jesuits turned her bones to dust and set the ashes within the "newly rebuilt mission chapel." This symbolized her presence on earth, and her remains were sometimes used as relics for healing. ==Veneration==

at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, near Quebec City The first account of Kateri Tekakwitha was not published until 1715. Because of Tekakwitha's unique path to chastity, she is often referred to as a lily, a traditional symbol of purity. Religious images of Tekakwitha are often decorated with a lily and cross, with feathers or turtle as cultural accessories alluding to her Native American birth. Colloquial epithets for Tekakwitha are The Lily of the Mohawks (most notable), the Mohawk Maiden, the Pure and Tender Lily, the Flower among True Men, the Lily of Purity and The New Star of the New World. Her tribal neighbors – and her gravestone – referred to her as "the fairest flower that ever bloomed among the redmen." Her virtues are considered an ecumenical bridge between Mohawk and European cultures. Fifty years after her death, a convent for Native American nuns opened in Mexico. Indian Catholic missions and bishops in the 1880s initiated a petition for officially allowing veneration of Kateri. They asked for the veneration of Tekakwitha in tandem with the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and René Goupil, two Catholic missionaries who had been slain by the Mohawk in Osernnenon a few decades before Kateri's birth. They concluded their petition by stating that these venerations would help encourage Catholicism among other Native Americans. The process for Kateri Tekakwitha's canonization was initiated by United States Catholics at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1885, followed by Canadian Catholics. Some 906 Native Americans signed 27 letters in the US and Canada urging her canonization. Her spiritual writings were approved by theologians on July 8, 1936, and her cause was formally opened on May 19, 1939, granting her the title of Servant of God. On January 3, 1943, Pope Pius XII declared her venerable. In 2006, a young boy from Whatcom County in Washington state, Jake Finkbonner, was lying near death due to flesh-eating bacteria. According to the parents, the doctors believed he was incurable. Being of Lummi descent, the boy's parents knew about Kateri Tekakwitha and prayed to her. Jake survived the ordeal and made a full recovery. His healing was the first of Tekakwitha's miracles accepted by the Vatican. On December 19, 2011, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints certified a second miracle. She was canonized on October 21, 2012, by Pope Benedict XVI. She is the first Native American woman of North America to be canonized by the Catholic Church. In 2022, the Episcopal Church of the United States gave final approval to a feast dedicated to Tekakwitha on April 17 on the liturgical calendar. Kateri Tekakwitha is featured in four national shrines in the United States: the Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine in Fonda, New York; the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York; the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.; and The National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods, an open-air sanctuary in Indian River, Michigan. The latter shrine's design was inspired by Tekakwitha's habit of placing small wooden crosses throughout the woods. Statues There are numerous statues of Tekakwitha, among them are: • a granite monument in Kahnawake, financed by Clarence A. Walworth. • the Basilica San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, California • in St. Kateri Tekakwitha Church in Santa Clarita, California. A statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha stands at the steps of Holy Cross School at San Buenaventura Mission in Southern California • the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin • the bronze portal of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. • the Maryknoll Sisters' church at Ossining, New York • St. Patrick's church in the St. Stanislaus Kostka parish of Pittsburgh • Holy Cross Chapel Mausoleum in North Arlington, New Jersey • a Shrine of St. Kateri Tekakwitha is located in Paris, Stark County, Ohio • a shrine and church in rural Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States, in the town of Spring Mills. • a wooden statue stands prominent to the right of the main altar at San Xavier del Bac Mission, a mission church completed in 1797, south of Tucson, Arizona. ==Miracles==

Joseph Kellogg was a Protestant child captured by Natives in the eighteenth century and eventually returned to his home. Twelve months later, he caught smallpox. Jesuits treated him, but he was not recovering. They had relics from Tekakwitha's grave but did not want to use them on a non-Catholic. One Jesuit told Kellogg that if he would become a Catholic, help would come to him. Joseph did so. The Jesuit gave him a piece of decayed wood from Tekakwitha's coffin, which is said to have healed him. Historian Allan Greer takes this account to mean that Tekakwitha was known in 18th-century New France, and she was already perceived to have healing abilities. The authorized miracle dates from 2006, when a young boy in Washington state survived a severe flesh-eating bacterium. Doctors had been unable to stop the disease's progress by surgery and advised his parents he was likely to die. The boy received the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick from a Catholic priest. As the boy is half Lummi Indian, the parents said they prayed to Tekakwitha for divine intercession, as did their family and friends, and an extended network contacted through their son's classmates. Sister Kateri Mitchell visited the boy's bedside and placed a relic of Tekakwitha, a bone fragment, against his body and prayed together with his parents. The next day, the infection stopped its progression. ==Indigenous perspectives==

Mohawk scholar Orenda Boucher noted that, in her opinion, there were "mixed feelings" surrounding the canonization of Tekakwitha. There are traditionalist Mohawk who feel her story was tied into the tragedies of colonization that deeply affected the people of Kahnawake. Despite this dark past, Tekakwitha herself is generally respected among Catholic and traditionalist Mohawk alike. Much of the debate surrounding Tekakwitha's canonization is built upon the idea that it was done to bolster the image of the Church among Native Americans.--> Paula E. Holmes interviewed several elderly Native American women in the late 1990s and found they considered Tekakwitha "part of their Indian familiar and familial heritage." == In Art ==

File:Histoire de l'Amerique Septentrionale - divisée en quatre tomes (1753) (14577115098).jpg|alt=St. Kateri Tekakwitha, wearing a blanket mantle, and holding a wooden cross, stands before the Kahnawake mission along the St. Lawrence River. |Bacqueville de la Potherie, Catherine Tekakouíta (1753) File:Jan Henryk de Rosen, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (detail) (1943).webp|alt=St. Kateri Tekakwitha, surrounded by American saints and missionaries, extends her hands in prayer. |Jan Henryk de Rosen, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (detail) (1943) File:John Angel, Ven. Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of The Mohawks (1949).jpg|alt=St. Kateri Tekakwitha, wearing a shawl mantle, and wearing a cross necklace, closes her eyes as the turns her face to heaven.|John Angel, Ven. Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of The Mohawks (1949) File:Timothy P. Schmalz, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (detail) (2001).png|alt=St. Kateri Tekakwitha holds a hand-made wooden cross in her hand.|Timothy P. Schmalz, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (detail) (2001) File:Dale Claude Lamphere, statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (2016).jpg|alt=St. Kateri Tekakwitha, wearing a shawl mantle, holds a wooden cross in her hands.|Dale Claude Lamphere, statue of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (2016) File:The Trinity Dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, detail (2017).jpg|alt=St. Kateri Tekakwitha, wearing a shawl mantle, holds a hand-made wooden cross in her hands, over her heart.|The Trinity Dome, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (detail) (2017) File:Adam Cvijanovic, What’s So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding (detail) (2025).png|alt=St. Kateri Tekakwitha, wearing a dark blue blanket mantle, holds a stalk of lilies and a rosary in her hand.|Adam Cvijanovic, What’s So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding (detail) (2025) ==Cultural references==

More than 300 books have been published in more than 20 languages on the life of Kateri Tekakwitha. The historian K. I. Koppedrayer has suggested that the Catholic Church fathers' hagiography of Tekakwitha reflected "trials and rewards of the European presence in the New World." It was not the first stage performance of her life; Joseph Clancy's play, The Princess of the Mohawks, was performed often by schoolchildren starting in the 1930s. Literature • Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966) • William T. Vollmann, Fathers and Crows (1992) • Victor O'Connell, Eaglechild (2016) • Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God (2017) • Diane Glancy, The Reason for Crows (2019) Animation • In the French animated series Clémentine, Clémentine Dumant meets and befriends Tekakwitha. Music • Niall Connolly, song "Lily of the Mohawks" on his album Sound (2013) == Eponyms ==

Numerous churches, schools and other Catholic institutions have been named for her, particularly since her canonization. Among these are Canadian schools in Kitchener, Markham, Hamilton, London, Orléans (Ottawa), and Calgary, Alberta. In the United States, Catholic Churches are named after her in Dearborn, MI, Buffalo, TX, Sparta, NJ, Schenectady, NY (parish and school), Irondequoit, NY (parish and school), and Santa Clarita, CA. A school is named after her in Niskayuna, NY. Kateri Residence, a nursing home in Manhattan, is named for her. The chapel of Welsh Family Hall at the University of Notre Dame, built in 1997, is dedicated to her. Since 1939, the Tekakwitha Conference meets annually to support Catholic missions among Native Americans. People gather in Kateri Circles to pray together, seeking to become better Catholics. In 1991, the conference reported 130 registered Kateri Circles. Tekakwitha Woods in St. Charles, Illinois is named after her at the request of the local Sisters of Mercy religious order who sold the land to the Forest Preserve District of Kane County, Illinois in 1992. The preserve lies on land that was once part of the traditional territory of the Potawatomi people. ==References==