Black Saints for Black History Month: St Kateri Tekakwitha (1656 – 1680)
St Kateri Tekakwitha was a Native American Indian born in 1656 in America in New York State near the border with Canada. Daughter of the chief of the Mohawk tribe. Both parents died of smallpox, white man’s disease. Tekakwitha recovered but it scared her face and damaged her eyesight. Adopted by her father’s sister who was married to chief of Turtle clan. She lived with them in Caughnawaga, a new village by Mohawk River. She was impressed by the Jesuit missionaries. At age 18 asked to be a Catholic. Baptised with name Kateri in 1676 aged 20. Moved to Jesuit mission house. Was very devout. With a close friend at the longhouse they inspired each other. Both wanted to be nuns but were not allowed. Kateri died aged 24.
The native American Indian was born in about 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon in New York State near the border with Canada on the east coast of America. Her father was Mohawk chief Kenneronkwa and his wife Kahenta, an Algonquin woman captured in a raid along the Ottawa River, then adopted and assimilated into the tribe. Kahenta had been baptised Catholic and educated by French missionaries east of Montreal before she was captured by Mohawk warriors and taken to their village. The Mohawk tribe was part of the “Five Nations Confederacy” or “Iroquois League” which was a non-aggression pact among the Indian tribes occupying the territory of the “Longhouses”, the land running north-south between the Hudson River, New York State and Lake Erie. There were some 25,000 inhabitants in this area and they were able to muster a force of about 4,000 braves.
She eventually married the Mohawk chief and Tekakwitha was the first of their two children. Her name meant “she puts things in order”. The village was highly diverse as the Mohawk were absorbing many captured natives of other tribes, particularly their competitors the Huron tribe, who lived along the St Lawrence River. This was to replace people who died from warfare, of diseases such as measles and chicken pox, disease brought over by the invading settlers from Europe. Such captives were adopted into the tribe to become full members and were expected to embrace the Mohawk customs.
Between 1660 and 1663, the Mohawk tribe suffered a severe smallpox epidemic, “the white man’s disease”, causing a high rate of fatalities. When Tekakwitha was around 4 years old, her baby brother and both parents died of smallpox. She just survived but was left with facial pox scars and impaired eyesight and was adopted by her father’s sister and her husband, a chief of the Turtle clan. Before the epidemic in 1659, some members of the Mohawk tribe had started a new village on the north side of the Mohawk River called Caughnawaga, meaning “at the wild water”. Her uncle took her parents and brother’s bodies to the new village for burial. According to Mohawk practices, Tekakwitha was taken care of by her aunt and uncle’s extended family with whom she lived with happily in the longhouse. Despite Tekakwitha’s eyesight being poor, she could see close up and became an expert at decorative embroidery and developed traditional women’s skills in making clothing and belts from animal skins, weaving mats, baskets and boxes from reeds and grasses. She prepared food from game, crops and gathered produce and took part in the women’s seasonal planting and intermittent weeding.
The French and Dutch colonists were competing in the lucrative fur trade with the native Indian tribes. The Mohawk tribe initially traded with the Dutch while the Huron tribe were trading with the French. Trying to make inroads in the Iroquois territory, the French attacked the Mohawk Indians, driving them from their homes and villages. The French burned three Mohawk villages, destroying the longhouses, the wigwams and the women’s corn and squash fields. Tekakwitha, then around ten years old, fled with her new family into a cold October forest. After this defeat by the French forces, the Mohawk Indians were forced into a peace treaty that required them to accept the Jesuit missionaries into their villages. The Jesuits studied Mohawk and other native Indian languages so they could preach to them and spoke of Christianity in terms with which the Indians could identify. For instance the Mohawk word for “Sky World” was used as the word for heaven in the Lord’s prayer.
The Mohawk Indians rebuilt the village of Caughnawaga and in 1667 Tekakwitha met the three Jesuits Fr Jacques Frémin, Fr Jacques Bruyas and Fr Jean Pierron and was impressed by the “Blackrobes” as they were known. However, her uncle the chief was opposed to any contact with them because he did not want her to convert to Christianity. One of his older daughters had already left the village to go to the Catholic mission village across the St Lawrence River. Tekakwitha took notice but did attend some of the festivals but made no moves show any more interest.
Two years later in the summer of 1669, several hundred Mohican warrior launched a dawn attack on the village. Rousing quickly to the defence of Caughnawaga, Mohawk Indians fought off the invaders, who kept the village under siege for three days. Tekakwitha, now aged 13, joined other girls to help Fr Jean Pierron tend to the wounded, bury the dead and carry food and water to the defending warriors on the palisades. When reinforcements arrived from other Mohawk villages, the defenders drove the Mohican warriors into retreat. The victorious Mohawk Indians pursued the Mohican warriors, attacking them in the forest, killing over 80 and capturing several others. Returning to Caughnawaga amid the widespread celebration, the victors tortured the captive Mohicans, 13 men and 4 women. For two afternoons in succession, planning to execute them on the third. Fr Pierron instructed the captives in Catholic doctrine as best he could and baptised them before they died under torture.
Now aged 13, Tekakwitha, despite her facial scars and poor eyesight, was continually pressured to consider marriage, especially by her aunt. However, she had no intention of marrying and made a private vow to stay celibate and turned down many proposals from young Mohawk braves.
Later in 1669, the “Iroquois Feast of the Dead”, held every ten years, was convened at Caughnawaga. This was an event for the five tribes of the Iroquois League so members of the Oneida. Cayuga and Seneca people were present along with Chief Garakontié who led the Onondaga tribe members. The remains of Tekakwitha’s parents and brother, along with many others who had died in the previous decade, were to be carefully exhumed so that their souls could be released to wander to the spirit land to the west. Fr Pierron then became involved and spoke against their beliefs saying they were false. The assembled Iroquois, upset by his remarks, ordered him to be silent. But Fr Pierron continued, telling the Iroquois to give up their “superstitious rites”. Under Chief Garakontié’s protection, the priest finished his speech, He demanded that to secure continued friendship with the French, they must give up their “Feast of the Dead”, their faith in dreams as a guide to action, the worship of their war god and leave their buried relatives undisturbed. At length, the assembled five tribes relented possible on financial grounds as they needed trade with the French. Chief Garakontié later became a Christian.
In 1671, Mohawk Chief Ganeagowa, who had led his warriors to victory against the Mohicans two years earlier, returned from a long hunting trip in the north to announce he had become a Christian. He had come upon the Catholic Iroquois village set up by the Jesuits at La Prairie, southwest of Montreal. He there made friendly contact with Fr Jacques Frémin who had served in Caughnawaga. Influenced by the Iroquois villagers’ Catholic faith and his wife Satékon, Chief Ganeagowa received instruction for several months from Fr Frémin who then accepted him into the Church.
Tekakwitha’s uncle, chief of the Turtle clan was disturbed by conversion and moved his people to the north bank of the Mohawk River and built the “castle” above what is now the town of Fonda. Here in the midst of scenes of carnage, debauchery and idolatrous frenzy, Tekakwitha lived a life of amazing virtue. She now experienced great pressure from her aunt to consider marriage and was introduced to a young brave who wanted to marry her. She was tricked into offering him a certain dish made with corn. Iroquois custom regarded this as a woman’s sign of openness to marriage. Tekakwitha fled and hid from the family in a nearby field. When she eventually returned she was punished by her aunt with ridicule, threats and harsh workloads.
In the Spring of 1674, when Tekakwitha was age18, the Jesuit priest Fr Jacques de Lamberville came to the village. Most of the women were out harvesting corn, but Tekakwitha had injured her foot and was in the longhouse. In the presence of others in the longhouse she told the Jesuit her story and how she wanted to stay a virgin and was interested in Christianity. She then began studying the Catechism with him. Tekakwitha was a mild mannered girl who behaved very well and did everything she could to stay holy in bad secular society, which often caused minor conflicts with her longhouse residents.
Fr Jacques de Lamberville, who was called “Dawn of the Day” by the Indians, baptised Tekakwitha at age 19 on Easter Sunday, 18th April 1676 and she took the baptismal name “Catherine” after Catherine of Siena. Kateri was the Mohawk form of the name. Now things got really difficult for her and the chief of the Oneida tribe, a Christian, known as “Hot Ashes” or “Hot Ciders” for his ferocious temper, helped her escape from the village. One of his companions was an Algonquin Christian related to Kateri’s mother who managed to get her to the Jesuit Mission du Sault St Louis, Kahnawake, near Montreal. Fr Jacques had sent a message to the priests at the mission, “Here is treasure, guard it well”.
The Jesuits had founded Kahnawake for the religious conversion of the native Indians. When it began, the Indians built their traditional longhouses for residence. They also built a longhouse to be used as a church by the Jesuits. There were three priests in charge of the mission which was a compound of some size with well over a hundred native American Indians converts living within the stockade. As a missionary settlement, Kahnawake was at risk of being attacked by those of the Iroquois Confederacy who had not converted to Catholicism, especially four of the tribes other than the Mohawk as most of the conversions were from that tribe. After Kateri’s arrival, she shared the longhouse of her uncle’s daughter and her husband. She would have known other people in the longhouse who had migrated from their former village of Caughnawaga. Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, her mother’s close friend, was the clan matron of the longhouse so she and other Mohawk women introduced the regular practices of Christianity to Kateri.
She settled into a life of intense religious observation, with two Masses every day, starting at 4am, recitation of the Rosary and Vespers with Benediction in the evenings. Kateri was allowed to make her First Communion on Christmas Day 1677, having been through the long probationary period since her Baptism on which the missionaries insisted. She was befriended by an older woman named Marie-Thérèse Tegaiaguenta and they inspired each other to fresh heights of devotion and acts of penance. These practices of mortification extended to severe fasting, adding undesirable tastes to food, piercing themselves with thorns and even burning themselves, all encouraged by Anastasia, matron of the longhouse and their spiritual counsellor. When it was clear that these penances were badly affecting their health, Fr Chauchetière intervened and scolded the two women, saying that penance must be used in moderation. He told the two that they must have him approve their penances lest they become unreasonable. They both listened to the priest and from then on only practiced whatever penance the priest would allow, much to the relief of Fr Chauchetière.
Now the two friends settled down to a much more normal development in their faith and spiritual lives and eventually asked if they could become nuns. The missionaries, true to their time, laughed at the idea of native American Indian women ever being nuns. So Kateri then consoled herself by making a private vow of perpetual virginity. Marie and Kateri prayed together and developed a strong spiritual friendship. The two women influenced a circle of associates and with their disciples practiced their faith together. The missionary priests were bothered by this development and the two women were told they were too “young in faith” for such a faith group to be formed.
Kateri’s health, never robust since her child hood smallpox, began to fail, not helped by her fasting on Wednesdays and Saturdays and other acts of penance, and was confined to her bed, a thin stuffed mattress. She spent hours staring joyfully at holy pictures given by the missionaries when she was no longer able to go to the longhouse church. At the beginning of Holy Week 1680, friends noted that Kateri was becoming very weak. On Holy Wednesday, when people knew she had but a few hours to left to live, villages gathered together, accompanied by the missionary priests and Fr Chauchetière administered the last rites. Kateri Tekakwitha died around 3pm on 17th April 1680 aged 24 in the arms of friend Marie-Thérèse. Her final words were, “Jesus, Mary. I love you”.
After she died, within a quarter of an hour, her face so swarthy and marked with smallpox scars, was suddenly so beautifully clear and white and all her scars had disappeared. It is claimed the Kateri appeared to three individuals in the weeks after her death. Her mentor and matron of the longhouse, Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, her close friend Marie-Thérèse and Fr Chauchetière. Anastasia said that, while crying over the death of her spiritual daughter, she looked up to see Kateri “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”. She went outside but saw no one; she heard a voice murmur, “Adieu, Adieu, go tell the father that I’m going to heaven”. Fr Chauchetière meanwhile said he saw Kateri at her grave; he said she appeared in “baroque splendour; for two hours he gazed upon her and her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy”.
Fr Chauchetière had a chapel built near Kateri’s gravesite by the river. By 1684, pilgrimages had begun to honour her there. She was canonised on 21st October 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.