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Kateri Tekakwitha: Lily of the Mohawks or Wallflower of the Colonizers?

An investigation into a troubled history of native identity.

By Hannah Barr

 

The relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the native peoples of North America is both troubling and undeniably complex. History triumphantly proclaims the success of Roman Catholic evangelism, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with tales of “savages” becoming “saints” at the hands of pious and devoted Jesuit missionaries. One such example of this is the story of Kateri or Catherine Tekakwitha.[1] Kateri was the daughter of an Algonquin woman, adopted into a Mohawk tribe and brought up by her uncle, the tribe’s chief. Exposed to Roman Catholic missionaries who had access to her tribe because of the terms imposed by their peace treaty, she eventually fled her tribe, based in modern day Albany, New York State, to spend the rest of her life in Kahnawake, near to Montreal today, with other female native converts. However, whilst Roman Catholic history has elevated Kateri’s story to one of divinely providential ecclesiastical mission, there is another story to contend with. The contentious issue of one man’s mission being the desecration of another man’s culture is increasingly being recognized when discussing Roman Catholic mission to North America’s native peoples. Thus, the appropriation of Kateri Tekakwitha by the Roman Catholic Church is seen by some, particularly within her native community, to be a further insult to the aboriginal beliefs and traditions, dubbed “savage” and “uncivilized” by their colonial aggressors. With her canonization fresh in the memory, taking place in the Vatican on the 24th October 2012, the tensions have yet again arisen over who – for wont of a better term – owns Kateri. Is she Mohawk? Is she Catholic? Or is she actually a figure who can belong in the domain of both of those identities? As her story and the reactions she provokes are examined, it would appear one of these groups is about to lose their blessed Kateri.

Popular perception of Kateri Tekakwitha is one of uncompromised piety and purity, due to her portrayal by her Jesuit missionary mentors and initial hagiographers, Pierre Cholenec and Claude Chauchetière, as ‘the Indian Virgin Kateri Tekakwitha.’[2] She is presented through the Roman Catholic tradition as a girl who fought against pressure from both her own Mohawk community to marry, as well as the pressure from within her newfound Iroquois community in Kahnawake, from her spiritual mentor there, Anastasia. Instead, she is said to have declared, ‘”I hate men…I have the deepest aversion to marriage.”’[3] However, her depiction as the ideal virgin woman, no doubt heavily emphasised by her Roman Catholic hagiographers in order to draw parallels between their new convert and one of the prime figures in Roman Catholic theology, the Virgin Mary, is not a universally accepted portrayal. In The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin, author, Koppedrayer, recounts an interview with a contemporary Christian Mohawk. She writes, ‘one middle-aged Christian Mohawk applied terms such as “prostitute” and “leaking pot” to Kateri, even though the sources in her official biography extol her virginity, piety and virtue.’[4] To this Christian Mohawk, ‘he used “leaking pot” to suggest that [Kateri]…delivered information to the French about Iroquois strategy’[5] upon her flight from her native community to the apparent safety on a French Catholic colony further north.

Furthermore, it is interesting that the aforementioned man labels Kateri as a “prostitute.” Whilst Koppedrayer explains that the man she interviewed ‘meant that the perpetual virgin her Jesuit biographers claim her to be,’[6] Kateri Tekakwitha was, in fact, subject to lingering doubt on her virginity throughout her life. The story is told from everyone involved in Kateri’s life from the hagiographers she knew, to contemporary historians. The defamation against Kateri’s virginal credentials is that she is supposed to have had ‘secret trysts with another woman’s husband.’[7] However, the alternative view to the tale is that she was in the woods late at night when a hunter stayed over for the evening, which was apparently not uncommon, and ‘the priests declared her to be beyond reproach. Up to her death, however, she remained under suspicion’[8] from her own community. The anecdote does not seem to have had any lasting impact on her standing within Roman Catholic tradition, nor has it detracted from her labels of purity and virginity. Nevertheless, what this story does tell us, is that the Kateri Tekakwitha “Lily of the Mohawks, “ “Pious Savage,” “Perpetual Virgin,” is potentially a fabrication on the part of her Jesuit superiors. ‘The Jesuits created Kateri Tekakwitha…take away this creation, and there is no independent oral tradition on Kateri.’[9]

It is impossible to know what to call the eponymous hero of this essay. She goes by several names: Catherine Tekakwitha, Kateri Tekakwitha, Katharine Tegakoüita. However, this way of referring to this mysterious seventeenth century Mohawk woman is, according to one of the foremost scholars on her, Allen Greer, an example of the Americanization of Kateri. Firstly, the name set up of a first name and then a surname, is a completely alien concept within Mohawk communities, if not all native groups in North America. Secondly, it would appear that her name in Mohawk, Tekakwitha, is actually her first name. Such an idea is consistent with ‘Tekakwitha’ meaning ‘she who bumps into things;’[10] an apt name for someone who survived a small pox epidemic, which killed both of her parents and her brother, and left her with a pockmarked face and ‘impaired eyesight.’[11] Finally, the Christian name of Catherine of Kateri is precisely that: a Christian name. Conferred upon her baptism, in honour of Saint Catherine de Siena, the popularity of calling her Kateri, is said to be the pronunciation of the French for Catherine by Mohawk tongues. Thus, in calling this Mohawk woman, Kateri Tekakwitha, vestiges of her native identity have been stripped away and a Roman Catholic identity imposed upon her just as colonial powers imposed their rule upon the native peoples of North America.  In other words, there is an implicit sense of theft on the part of the Jesuit missionaries in appropriating Kateri for their own evangelism needs; and this sits uncomfortably with many in the Mohawk community today. With her recent canonization, these complex emotions have resurfaced.

Whilst Roman Catholic tradition recounts Kateri Tekakwitha’s flight from her dangerous Mohawk community and its threat of persecution, there is a feeling among some in the Mohawk community that her flight was in some sense a betrayal of her identity and of all native peoples. In a recent article published in The Poughkeepsie Journal, it was reported that ‘some traditional Mohawks are treating the naming of the nation’s first Native American saint with skepticism and fear that the Roman Catholic Church is using it to shore up its image and marginalize traditional spiritual practices.’[12] It is more than easy to sympathize with this view; one of the trademarks of later French arrivals in the New World was marked by a departure from genial fur trading relationships with the native peoples, to an imposition of colonial rule and an overriding view of the native peoples and their “ni foi, ni roi, ni loi” way of life as heretical, savage and thoroughly uncivilized. The prevalent view among Roman Catholic missionaries to the United States and Canada, was that ‘real Indians, it was thought, needed to shed their distinctive culture as quickly as possible.’[13] This view can be clearly seen in the original manuscript of Claude Chauchetière’s hagiography of Kateri. He writes of her going into the woods, as part of a custom of Mohawk women, that ‘God doubtlessly wished that she should sanctify herself in the woods as she had done in the village, to prove to all the savages, by the beautiful example she gave, that virtue may be practiced equally in both these places.’[14] Chauchetière’s, and by association all of his contemporary Catholic colleagues, attitude to Kateri’s native culture was that it was “savage.”

In many ways, Kateri Tekakwitha can be seen as some sort of, to put it crudely, pet project on the part of the Jesuit missionaries she encountered to validate their work in the New World. Kateri is the ultimate “success story” of Roman Catholic mission in North America, and has been subsequently used to stamp a divine seal of approval upon their evangelism techniques. In a later Roman Catholic biography of Kateri Tekakwitha a Catholic priest, Reverend LeCompte, writes of Kateri, ‘in a special manner God appears wonderful in the Indian Virgin Kateri Tekakwitha, leading her by His grace amidst a people most corrupt and steeped in heathen errors; protecting her by His providence as by a strong shield.’[15] In view of such denigrating language towards Kateri’s Mohawk culture, and traditional Native American culture in general, it is readily apparent why her recent canonization has provoked such intense fury from some people. Speaking to Fox News last month, Doug George-Kanentiio, a Mohawk writer who renounced his Catholicism in order to follow the traditional longhouse spiritual practices of the Mohawk community, said of Kateri’s appropriation by the Catholic Church, ‘”I was a recipient of these historical profanities and want to ensure this does not happen again.”’[16] George-Kanentiio is the mouthpiece of a view from the native peoples of North America that ‘the story of Kateri Tekakwitha is yet another reminder of colonial atrocities and religious oppression.’[17] Koppedrayer expounds upon this viewpoint, stating that Kateri’s ‘conversion and subsequent flight to the French mission in what is now Kahnawake, Quebec, betrayed her heritage…it reduced what Kateri’s contemporaries saw as a profound expression of faith to not only a false, but worse, a reprehensible act, unthinkable and vile.’[18]

The adverse reactions Kateri Tekakwitha provokes are no doubt due to some of the on-going tensions between native groups and the religious heritage left behind by a former colonial presence. As Koppedrayer states, ‘the response to Kateri’s biography is paradigmatic of both an earlier and on-going encounter between Native Americans and Europeans…Kateri represents an alliance with Roman Catholicism and French institutions, both of which are unconscionable in light of present-tense relations.’[19] However, implicit in Greer’s thought is that Kateri’s conversion and departure geographically from her native community is not so much an active betrayal of Mohawk identity on the part of Kateri herself, but is rather an insulting invention of a Christian native woman on the part of her Jesuit hagiographers. In his recounting of Pierre Cholenec’s description of Kateri Tekakwitha’s death and its immediate aftermath, Greer notes a very important detail: ‘soon after, people noticed a transformation in her appearance. Father Cholenec was amazed: “this face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death, and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately.”’[20] In other words, upon her death, the sense of divine presence which became so important for justifying her sainthood, comes at the expense of her very ethnic makeup. In death, ‘God had removed the marks of disease, suffering, and racial inferiority, transforming the Mohawk woman into a radiant corpse exuding a saintly aura.’[21] In Roman Catholic tradition, as it is what occurs in the name of a person after their death which contributes to their elevation from blessed to saint, it is of the utmost importance to note that, in the eyes of her hagiographers and thus of the Catholic Church, the miracles done in the name of Kateri Tekakwitha, occurred after all trace of her native identity had been disposed of. Thus, she is no different from the countless other white saints venerated by the Roman Catholic Church, and it is therefore arguably a heinous insult to refer to her as a Mohawk saint when her sainthood somehow relies on the premise that she is as far removed from her native identity as possible.

To bring the debate up to the present day, it would seem that the canonization of Kateri could be seen as just a pawn in the game of establishing Roman Catholicism within Canada and the United States. In his assessment of the apparent Americanization of Kateri Tekakwitha, he argues that, ‘among other proposals for rooting Catholicism more firmly in United States soil came the suggestion that genuinely American saints were needed…an innocent Indian from the distant colonial past, [Kateri], could serve as a screen on which to project…a primordial American essence that was the antithesis of industry, immigration, urban grime and class conflict.’[22] The problem with such a view is that the “distant colonial past” is not as distant to those who suffered under colonialism. Kateri’s Mohawk community is characterized by their aggressiveness and hostility to Christianity, and their apparent persecution of Kateri upon her conversion; a stereotype Chaz Kader, a Mohawk journalist, says is still a problem: ‘”the contrast of good Mohawks and bad Mohawks still is affecting our people.”’[23] A Mohawk humanities professor at Kiana Institution, Native American college in Quebec, Orenda Boucher; told Fox News, that ‘there are “mixed feelings” and no easy answer to the question of what Kateri represents to Mohawks…”a lot of my friends who are traditionalists see Kateri as tied into the story of colonization that has deeply affected Kahnawake, and to the atrocities of the church.”’[24] Yet, one must ask the question why Saint Kateri Tekakwitha has been so vehemently petitioned for over the centuries since her death, and why a trip to Akwesasne Indian Reserve on the Ontario/Quebec/United States border, takes you to shrine after shrine dedicated to her and has a road named after her.[25]

Whilst there are many within the Mohawk community who view the canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha as an example of continued colonial desecration of traditional native culture, there are those, especially native people who identity their religious beliefs with the Roman Catholic Church, who celebrate her recognition by the Church at last, and see her recognition by the central authority of the Church in Rome as a very positive thing for native-Catholic relationships in North America. A prime example of this can be seen in the Tekakwitha Conference. Initially an example of colonialism at its most abhorrent, it began ‘in 1939 as a gathering of white missionaries in the western states, but in the 1970s, control shifted to an increasingly militant Indian laity,’[26] and it is now run by an entirely native group. In its vision statement of the National Tekakwitha Conference in 1988, it stated, ‘as Native Catholics, we are encouraged by the recognition of our Native cultures, traditions and languages in the Roman Catholic Church,’[27] and celebrating ‘the beginnings of liturgical inculturation’[28] as ‘nourishing [their] spiritual lives.’[29] Four years later, the Tekakwitha Conference proclaimed, ‘historically, our Church has officially canonized those whom the people have proclaimed Saints. Kateri is a Saint. Our people believe this. We believe this.’[30]

For devout native Catholics, Kateri is the most accessible intercessor within their faith, and her canonization has been a long time coming. Whoever Kateri Tekakwitha may or may not be in history, her Roman Catholic hagiographical portrayal is the door for native Catholics into the wider Roman Catholic Church; she is a bridge to ecumenicalism within Catholicism. Nevertheless, the 1992 conference, and the Tekakwitha Conference in general, is striking for two reasons. Firstly, they name their conference after Tekakwitha’s original native name, and not after her Christianized name, suggesting their devotion first and foremost to the native Catholic, rather than the Christianized convert, and thus reclaiming ownership back from colonial Jesuits. Secondly, in a song written by a nun named for Kateri, and performed at the conference in the Mohawk language goes: ‘Kateri Tekakwitha/ ne onkwa tate kenha/ onen kionkinonks/ onwen tsionhakwekon.’[31] Roughly translated, the chorus means, ‘Kateri Tekakwitha/ Noble Turtle/ Mother Earth/ Gathers her people East, South, West and North.’[32] In a conference of believers who are part of the Roman Catholic Communion, celebrating the life of another Roman Catholic, it is striking that the repeated stanza of a song about Kateri Tekakwitha does not once mention anything to do with her faith, but who she is for the native peoples of North America. Kateri is described in language which is fundamentally native, from the core native belief in Mother Earth, to the reference to Kateri’s Mohawk Turtle Clan. The attitude towards Kateri Tekakwitha presented by the Tekakwitha Conference demonstrates that she is no longer constrained by Jesuit hagiography. To quote Allen Greer: ‘at last, Native Americans are having their turn to fashion a Tekakwitha that matches their needs…the native saint has come home.’[33]

A cursory examination of the techniques employed by Jesuit missionaries in North American when trying to convert the native peoples reveals the theology they sought to evangelize with was often far removed from orthodox Roman Catholic belief. Instead, it was often structured to appear as similar to native traditions and beliefs as possible, in order to maximize the potential number of native converts, who they hoped would be enticed in by what were similar religious practices but with the threat of eternal damnation if they were not followed through with properly. This certainly seems to be the case with regards to the evangelizing and subsequent conversion of Kateri Tekakwitha. It is a method dubbed by Shoemaker as a ‘sly missionary philosophy;’[34] where the Jesuits with access to Kateri and her contemporaries, ‘learned the native language and worldview in order to package Christianity in a conceptual framework that was familiar to the people they were attempting to missionize.’[35] A prime example of making Christianity seem as Mohawk as possible for Kateri, could be seen in the rosary, or the prayer beads used by Roman Catholics, but which also resemble native wampum, which were ‘belts and necklaces made out of shell beads, which had spiritual and political meaning’[36] and were traditionally made for peace treaties. Thus, it is difficult to assess exactly how Roman Catholic, let alone Christian, native converts were.

Peculiar to Kateri’s situation and her Roman Catholicism is her involvement in what was essentially a native longhouse, despite the fact she was in the Jesuit haven of Kahnawake. Whilst at Kahnawake, Kateri’s Christian instruction came courtesy of another native convert, Anastasia, and ‘the Christianity Anastasia taught was full of sin and repentance, especially repentance.’[37] If anything, what Kateri practised was a convoluted Christianity with warped Roman Catholic theology exercised in an Iroquoian way. Kateri Tekakwitha is today synonymous within the Roman Catholic tradition for her overwhelming embrace of mortification of the flesh, consistent with her baptismal namesake, Saint Catherine de Siena. As Pierre Cholenec recounts, Kateri ‘attached herself to the cross [on her baptism day] with [Christ], taking the resolution to repeat on her virginal body the mortifications of Jesus Christ for the rest of her days, as if she had done nothing until then.’[38] Kateri took mortification to the extreme: ‘flagellations, branding, exposure, fasting, metal-spiked belts, thorn-filled belts, and so on were Kateri’s practice of Christianity…she devised more and more and greater and greater ways to suffer penances.’[39] However, it was undertaken as part of an exclusive group within the community at Kahnawake, which included Kateri’s confidant, Marie-Theresa. As a group, their friendship rested on performing penance to the extreme. Greer describes a secret meeting between Kateri and Marie-Theresa: ‘Catherine dropped to her knees and begged her companion not to spare her; and then, when Catherine’s shoulders were covered in blood; it was Marie-Theresa’s turn. When they were done, the two got dressed and hurried off to the chapel in a shared state of elation…mutual flagellation became a central figure of their relationship.’[40]

When examining the Christianity Kateri practiced, Iroquois and other native practices are thinly veiled. This further encourages veneration of Kateri by natives and native Catholics because it is celebration of a truly native woman, as opposed to a Roman Catholic hagiographic fabrication designed to validate missionary attempts in the New World. As part of the community at Kahnawake, ‘they transformed Christianity into an Iroquois religion.’[41] Whilst there was undeniably a distinction between native Christian converts and their non-Christian family members, it is still easy to see a huge distinction between native converts and their Jesuit evangelizers in the motivating theology behind their religious expressions, in particular, their practice of ritual penance. As Shoemaker explains, ‘whereas the Jesuits emphasised the importance of Christian ritual in determining one’s place in the afterlife, Tekakwitha and other Christian Iroquois had new and pressing needs for empowering rituals to control the increasingly uncertain, earthly present.’[42] Herein lies the key issue concerning Kateri: to which religious tradition does she belong, native or Roman Catholic? Whilst her hagiographies suggest her devotion was first and foremost to Jesus Christ, the ecclesiastical nature of the pseudo-Christian, quasi-longhouse in which she practised her beliefs warrants the view of Kateri as ‘an intercessor working on behalf of the Indian peoples of Canada…not simply an historical figure, but as a very powerful, and very present, force working towards a physical and spiritual reconstruction of the Indian people.’[43] Kateri Tekakwitha has been reclaimed from Roman Catholic hagiography and contemporary Church politics, and she has been reclaimed by her own people who recognise the peculiarity of her faith and its fundamental similarities with her own native tradition. Kateri is symbolic of a liberation theology of the native peoples of North America.

However, there is a third strand of thought concerning Kateri Tekakwitha and to which allegiance her religious identity lends itself. In Allen Greer’s work, Mohawk Saint, he examines the relationship between Claude Chauchetière and Kateri Tekakwitha as ‘colonizer speaking the colonized,…man to woman, priest to layperson, educated to illiterate, healthy to sick, civilized to savage: every aspect of their encounter urged the Jesuit to see Catherine as inferior.’[44] Yet, the Jesuit soon came to see ‘Catherine as his spiritual supervisor and view his encounter with her as a transformative moment.’[45] What is striking about the relationship dynamic between Kateri and Chauchetière is the way it becomes quickly inverted, with Kateri’s rise to prominence and independent undertaking of a Christian tradition unique to her situation, undermining the power imbalance generally created by colonizing powers in native communities. Furthermore, this shifting of the power imbalance by Kateri and her group at Kahnawake is done in a way that is fundamentally female. Thus, it can be reasonably argued that Kateri is above all not the poster girl for Roman Catholic evangelism or native Catholicism, but rather she is the symbolic figure for native women struggling to find their identity within socially constructed gender roles.

Kateri Tekakwitha lived a life no-one would envy: orphaned, injured and unable to participate fully in the way her native Mohawk community expected her to, it is of little wonder that, upon finding an activity she excelled at, she embraced it fully, especially as it brought her close friends and confidants. It just so happened that the activity was extreme penance and the community was under a Roman Catholic authority. But, a prevailing view among scholars is that the Christianity practised by Kateri and her contemporaries was, in fact, an expression of liberation in an explicitly female manner. As Shoemaker explains, ‘despite the conceptual similarities between Iroquois beliefs and Christianity, those who converted to Christianity so seem to have been already marginal within their communities.’[46] Whilst ‘life-long celibacy struck the Iroquois as odd, virginity and sexual abstinence were conceived as sources of power,’[47] and for Kateri and her vow of perpetual virginity, ‘this too became an assertion of autonomy.’[48]

The penance practiced by Kateri, in the hands of her Roman Catholic hagiographers, is arguably very damaging to native people, particularly native women. In their praise of her penance, it says an awful lot about Roman Catholic attitudes to women at the time that their theological contribution was in their suffering as opposed to their general living. To be female and to be Christ-like required a quasi-martyrdom of the self without the glory of a bona fide martyrdom afforded male Jesuit missionaries. Furthermore, to go back to Cholenec’s depiction of Kateri after her death, her restoration to perfection could be seen as having a sexual or objectified element. Her beauty is only identified upon her life’s trials and ethnic marker’s disappearance. In the hands of hagiography, the canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha is colonialism once again rearing its ugly head.

However, within the Kahnawake group of Iroquois women with which Kateri practised her penance, her behaviour can be seen as liberation. The self-mortification Kateri, Marie-Theresa and others engaged in, gave the women ‘spiritual authority;’[49] as ‘through a syncretic transformation of the ritual of baptism, the Christian society, virginity, and self-mortification, Tekakwitha appeared holy and Christian to the Jesuits while pursuing status and a firmer sense of her own identity within Iroquois society.’[50] Divorced from Roman Catholic appropriation, Kateri Tekakwitha is not a symbol of colonial success, but rather of Jesuit ignorance and their evangelistic failings. In Kateri’s Kahnawake setting, her ‘self-mortification was understood to confer a kind of freedom. It suggested liberation from physical limitations, but also defiance of social conventions and even the laws of reason.’[51] In an interview for Fox News, George-Kanentiio, referring to Kateri Tekakwitha’s self-mortification stated, ‘”women in particular need not kneel in supplication to any man or any god but to rise to dance and sing in true joy.”’[52] Implicit in his comment is the view that Kateri’s self-punishment was as a result of Catholic theology, and is incompatible with matri-centric native tradition. However, what if Kateri’s penance was as far-removed from male supplication through Catholic theology as possible? Penance, Tekakwitha style was just that, unique to her and her situation. It could well be argued that it is only in the hand of hagiography that her actions have been attributed to a devotion to Christianity. Perhaps in inflicting pain upon herself, Kateri was taking back control from the body which had cursed her to physical inferiority since childhood. If one takes this to be the case, Kateri Tekakwitha is a model for womanhood, not as inspiration for mutilation, but as a model of taking control and subverting the patriarchal ideals of Roman Catholicism for her own, inherently native, needs.

Kateri Tekakwitha is an enigma; moreover, she is caught in an inter-cultural and multi-denominational custody battle. According to Roman Catholic history, she is their property, their native convert endowed with God’s blessing. Within the native community, reaction to her is split between native Catholics who celebrate her recognition on the global Catholic stage as a papal approval of native Catholics in general; whilst others view Kateri Tekakwitha as a colonial invention used to continually denigrate native culture. Simply, ‘Kateri is betrayal; Kateri is destruction; Kateri is synthesis; Kateri is hope and reconstruction; Kateri is past and present.’[53] Kateri is Kateri Tekakwitha, a native woman who, for better or for worse, cannot be totally divorced from her conversion to Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, upon examination of the theological motives behind her Catholicism, it is apparent that she can in no way be divorced from her native identity; thus, her appropriation by the Roman Catholic Church and subsequent canonization is, in many ways, a gross misconstruction of who Kateri was. Whilst the absence of a corroborated historical discourse on Kateri will forever obscure her actual identity, Kateri is fundamentally native first and Roman Catholic second. Her theology is convoluted, and her practice of penance is less rooted in Christ and much more rooted in her need for a community of compassion. Behind layers of hagiographic construction lies a Mohawk woman, whose symbolic figure is the property of all the native peoples of North America, regardless if they are Catholic or not. Kateri achieved what history has seemingly deemed an impossibility: she was thoroughly native, yet thoroughly approved by colonial powers for who she was. Only after her death was she crudely de-ethnicized from her native heritage. Kateri Tekakwitha is a Native American saint for Native American Catholics; but she is also a Native American woman for Native American women. It is within the native communities of North American where she belongs, regardless of recent acts of appropriation which took place in Rome last month. ‘The native saint has come home’[54] and it is there she will stay. Hagiographers no longer have any legitimate claim to Kateri Tekakwitha, a saint of all native traditions.

Image index

Image One: Kateri Tekakwitha Street, Akwesasne Indian Reserve. Taken 07/11/2012.

 

Bibliography

Archambaullt, M., The Crossing of Two Roads: Being Catholic and Native in the United States (American Catholic Identities), (Orbis Books: 2004).

Associated Press, ‘After Sainthood for Mohawk, admiration, pride, mixed with skepticism, fear, among Native Americans, published on Fox News, October 28, 2012. URL: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/28/after-sainthood-for-mohawk-admiration-pride-mix-with-skepticism-fear-among/ accessed 11, November 2012.

Esch, M., ‘Feelings Mixed on Mohawk’s Sainthood,’ published in Poughkeepsie Journal, 29 October, 2012. 

URL: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/viewart/20121029/NEWS/310290023/Feelings-mixed-Mohawk-s-sainthood  accessed 10, November 2012.

Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005

Greer, A., ‘Natives and Nationalism: The Americanization of Kateri Tekakwitha’ in The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (April 2004), pp.260-272, (The Catholic University of America Press).

Koppedrayer, I., ‘The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha’ in Ethnohistory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring 1993), pp.277-306, (Duke University Press).

 LeCompte, E., Glory of the Mohawks: The Life of the Venerable Catherine Tekakwitha, (Kessinger Publishing: 2010).

Otterman, S., ‘Complex Emotions Over First American Indian Saint’ published in The New York Times, July 24, 2012. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/nyregion/complex-emotions-as-kateri-tekakwitha-is-named-a-saint.html?pagewanted=a;;&_moc.smityn.www accessed 17 September, 2012.

Shoemaker, N., ‘Kateri Tekakwitha’s Torturous Path to Sainthood’ in In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, Kelm, E., (ed.), (University of Toronto Press: 2006).

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[1] ‘Kateri’ and ‘Catherine’ shall be used interchangeably to reflect the different scholarly articles used. I shall endeavour to refer to her consistently as ‘Kateri.’

[2] LeCompte, E., Glory of the Mohawks: The Life of the Venerable Catherine Tekakwitha, (Kessinger Publishing: 2010), p.161.

 

[3] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p.142.

[4] Koppedrayer, I., ‘The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha’ in Ethnohistory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring 1993), pp.277-306, (Duke University Press), p.277.

[5] Ibid. p.278.

[6] Ibid. p.278.

[7] Ibid. p.288.

[8] Ibid. p.288.

[9] Ibid. p.280.

[10] Otterman, S., ‘Complex Emotions Over First American Indian Saint’ published in The New York Times, Jily 24, 2012. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/nyregion/complex-emotions-as-kateri-tekakwitha-is-named-a-saint.html?pagewanted=a;;&_moc.smityn.www accessed 17 September, 2012.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Esch, M., ‘Feelings Mixed on Mohawk’s Sainthood,’ published in Poughkeepsie Journal, 29 October, 2012. URL: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/viewart/20121029/NEWS/310290023/Feelings-mixed-Mohawk-s-sainthood accessed 10, November 2012.

[13] Greer, A., ‘Natives and Nationalism: The Americanization of Kateri Tekakwitha’ in The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (April 2004), pp.260-272, (The Catholic University of America Press), p.261.

[14] Archambaullt, M., The Crossing of Two Roads: Being Catholic and Native in the United States (American Catholic Identities), (Orbis Books: 2004), p.85.

[15] LeCompte, E., Glory of the Mohawks: The Life of the Venerable Catherine Tekakwitha, (Kessinger Publishing: 2010), p.161.

[16] Assoicated Press, ‘After Sainthood for Mohawk, admiration, pride, mixed with skepticism, fear, among Native Americans, published on Fox News, October 28, 2012. URL: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/28/after-sainthood-for-mohawk-admiration-pride-mix-with-skepticism-fear-among/ accessed 11, November 2012.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Koppedrayer, I., ‘The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha’ in Ethnohistory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring 1993), pp.277-306, (Duke University Press), p.278.

[19] Ibid. p.279.

[20] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p.17.

[21] Ibid. p.17.

[22] Greer, A., ‘Natives and Nationalism: The Americanization of Kateri Tekakwitha’ in The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (April 2004), pp.260-272, (The Catholic University of America Press), p.262.

[23] [23] Assoicated Press, ‘After Sainthood for Mohawk, admiration, pride, mixed with skepticism, fear, among Native Americans, published on Fox News, October 28, 2012. URL: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/28/after-sainthood-for-mohawk-admiration-pride-mix-with-skepticism-fear-among/ accessed 11, November 2012.

[24] Ibid.

[25] See Image Index.

[26] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p.201.

[27] Archambaullt, M., The Crossing of Two Roads: Being Catholic and Native in the United States (American Catholic Identities), (Orbis Books: 2004), p.216.

[28] Ibid. p.216.

[29] Ibid. p.216.

[30] Ibid. p.228.

[31] Ibid. p.237.

[32] Ibid. p.237.

[33] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p. 205.

[34] Shoemaker, N., ‘Kateri Tekakwitha’s Torturous Path to Sainthood’ in In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, Kelm, E., (ed.), (University of Toronto Press: 2006), p.102.

[35] Ibid. p.101.

[36] Ibid. p.102.

[37] Koppedrayer, I., ‘The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha’ in Ethnohistory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring 1993), pp.277-306, (Duke University Press), p.287.

[38] Archambaullt, M., The Crossing of Two Roads: Being Catholic and Native in the United States (American Catholic Identities), (Orbis Books: 2004), p.87.

[39] Koppedrayer, I., ‘The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha’ in Ethnohistory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring 1993), pp.277-306, (Duke University Press), p.287.

[40] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p. 134.

[41] Shoemaker, N., ‘Kateri Tekakwitha’s Torturous Path to Sainthood’ in In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, Kelm, E., (ed.), (University of Toronto Press: 2006), p.110.

[42] Ibid. p.110.

[43] Koppedrayer, I., ‘The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha’ in Ethnohistory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring 1993), pp.277-306, (Duke University Press), p.278.

[44] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p.5.

[45] Ibid. p.5.

[46] Shoemaker, N., ‘Kateri Tekakwitha’s Torturous Path to Sainthood’ in In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, Kelm, E., (ed.), (University of Toronto Press: 2006), p.103.

[47] Ibid. p.109.

[48] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p.268.

[49] Shoemaker, N., ‘Kateri Tekakwitha’s Torturous Path to Sainthood’ in In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, Kelm, E., (ed.), (University of Toronto Press: 2006), p.109.

[50] Ibid. p.111.

[51] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p.122.

[52] [52] Associated Press, ‘After Sainthood for Mohawk, admiration, pride, mixed with skepticism, fear, among Native Americans, published on Fox News, October 28, 2012. URL: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/28/after-sainthood-for-mohawk-admiration-pride-mix-with-skepticism-fear-among/ accessed 11, November 2012.

[53] Koppedrayer, I., ‘The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin: Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha’ in Ethnohistory, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring 1993), pp.277-306, (Duke University Press), p.179.

[54] Greer, A., Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, (Oxford University Press: 2005), p.205.