Tekakwitha, Kateri

Tekakwitha, Kateri or Catherine: see Kateri Tekakwitha.

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Tekakwitha, Kateri

(born 1656, probably Ossernenon, New Netherland—died April 17, 1680, Caughnawaga, Que.) First North American Indian considered for canonization. The daughter of an Algonquin Christian mother and a non-Christian Mohawk father, she was born in what is now Auriesville, N.Y., U.S., and was partially blinded by smallpox as a child. She was deeply impressed by the lives and words of three Jesuit missionaries she met at age 11, and at 20 she was baptized. Harassed and threatened with torture in her home village, she fled 200 mi (320 km) to a Christian Indian mission near Montreal, where she became known as the “Lily of the Mohawks” for her kindness, faith, and heroic suffering before her early death. She was beatified in 1980.