Kateri of the Mohawks

FROM SAVAGE TO SAINT. First published in 1954, this book tells the story of a Mohawk chieftain's daughter who may soon may be canonized as North America's first native saint. The daughter of a Mohawk chieftain, Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656. Her mother, an Algonquin Christian captured in a Mohawk raid, was the brief but enduring influence in Tekakwitha's life. Whatever chance she may have had to teach her child about Christianity was lost when both parents died in a smallpox epidemic. Tekakwitha was ten years old when she heard for the first time of Rawenniio, the white man's God. But a full ten years passed before a Blackrobe, the Jesuit Father James de Lamberville, baptized her on Easter Sunday, 1676. She practiced her new faith with ever increasing fervor. After fleeing to the mission settlement in Canada, where she could join other Christians in the undisturbed practice of their faith, she performed extreme penances. Through a close companion, Kateri's words have been preserved for us, revealing the spirit of love and atonement with which she entered into this voluntary mortification. Soon her spent body could no longer contain her soaring soul. She died at the age of twenty-four, leaving all near her convinced that they were witnessing the passing of a saint.