Kateri Tekakwitha (redirected from Lily of the Mohawks)

Kateri Tekakwitha (gädälē` dĕkhäkhwē`thschwa;, –dālē` dāgäkwē`tä) or 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. She was beatified in 1980.

Bibliography

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