Celebrate America 250: An Indian Saint

April 17, 1680. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American Catholic saint, died.

Tekakwitha was a Mohawk Indian who was born in about 1656 in northeastern New York. She lost her entire family to smallpox as a young girl, and her village was attacked by the French in 1666. After being defeated by the French, the Mohawks were forced to accept Jesuit missionaries, who established a mission near present-day Auriesville, N.Y. The Jesuits explained Christianity to her in understandable terms, and she became interested in the faith. When her village was attacked by Mohican warriors in 1669, she helped a Jesuit priest care for the wounded Mohawks.

Her adoptive Mohawk family attempted to prevent her from becoming a Christian and tried to force her to marry within the tribe. She refused, eventually fleeing to the Jesuit mission at Sault-St.-Louis, now in Quebec, and was baptized on April 18, 1676. She received the name Kateri, the Mohawk equivalent of Catherine (for Catherine of Siena). At the mission she found a community of Indians who had converted to Christianity. She prayed fervently for the conversion of her adopted Mohawk family. She was recognized for her piety and good deeds.

In early 1680 her health started to fail, and she died on April 17. A Jesuit priest named Claude Chauchetiere was so impressed with her life that he painted the above portrait of her in about 1690 and wrote a biography of her in 1695. The effort to venerate her began in the 1880s, and in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI canonized her as a saint.

Kateri's life illustrates several common themes in the relationship between Indians and Europeans. She suffered from smallpox, a European disease, and warfare from the French. But the genuine Christian love of Jesuit missionaries overcame this brutality and brought her to Christ. Even though her own family and village persecuted her, she found a community of Indian Christians. Her short life of 23 or 24 years is a shining example of Christ's love overcoming violence, and she is a worthy example of a Native American Christian.