Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha, Saint (gädälēˈ dĕkhäkhwēˈħschwa;, –dālēˈ dāgäkwēˈtä) [key] or Saint Catherine Tekakwitha, 1656–80, Native American holy woman known as the Lily of the Mohawks, b. Ossernenon (now Auriesville, N.Y.). She was the daughter of a Mohawk chief and a captured Algonquin Christian, she was baptized a Roman Catholic in 1676 by a Jesuit missionary. Her tribespeople jeered and stoned her for her adopted faith, and she eventually went to a missionary settlement in Canada. Piety led her to the severest asceticism. The first North American Native American to be declared a saint, she was canonized in 2012.

See biography by M. C. Buehrle (1954).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.