Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha was born around 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon in what is now New York. The daughter of a Mohawk chief and an Algonquin mother who had been baptized Catholic, she was marked early by suffering: a smallpox epidemic took her parents and brother, leaving her orphaned, scarred, and with weakened eyesight. Adopted by relatives, she grew into a quiet, hardworking young woman, skilled in the daily arts of her people and steadfastly resisting pressure to marry. As Jesuit missionaries came among the Mohawk, Kateri’s heart was drawn to Christ. At nineteen she was baptized on Easter, taking the name Catherine, rendered in Mohawk as Kateri. Her new faith brought ridicule and harassment, and she eventually fled to the mission community at Kahnawake, south of Montreal. There she embraced a life of prayer, penance, and service, offering her sufferings for the conversion and healing of her people, and she took a vow of perpetual virginity. Venerated as the “Lily of the Mohawks” and the first Native American saint, she died on April 17, 1680. Her feast day is April 17.