Kateri Tekakwitha

St. Kateri Tekakwitha, drawn from memory by Fr  Claude Chauchetière at an unknown time between 1682 and 1693

Kateri Tekakwitha (also Káteri Tekahkwí: tha or Katharina Tebakwitha ; * around 1656 ; † April 17, 1680 ) was an Algonquin on her mother 's side, a Mohawk on her father's side , i.e. a member of an Indian tribe on the Great Lakes . She was often referred to as the Lily of the Mohawks or fleur-de-lys ( French for 'lily') and is venerated in the Catholic Church as a virgin and saint . It was founded in 1943 by Pope Pius XII. raised to Venerable Servant of God . 1980, Pope John Paul II. They saved . Pope Benedict XVI Kateri Tekakwitha canonized on October 21, 2012 in St. Peter's Square in Rome . The feast day of the saints in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church is April 17th, and July 14th in North America.

Shortly after her death, the virgin and ascetic began to be worshiped , who served as a model for the French Jesuits who were missionary among the Mohawk , and whose relics they kept. In the middle of the 18th century she was the patron saint of Francophone Canada , which was also predominantly Catholic . Her path between French and Iroquois politics, culture and spirituality now shows an extensive development of syncretistic ideas, which ascribe considerable creative power to the almost blind, abused and uprooted woman for the few years of her work.

Scientific research was less interested in the role model function of the saints than in embedding them in the historical and ethnohistorical context. The saint received considerable importance for religious and ethnological , but also for gender and ethno history , especially since some of the central lines of conflict in Canadian and US history culminated in her biography. The Mohawk themselves today emphasize the influence that the saint and her ancestral culture exerted on Catholicism, especially in the Canadian province of Québec .

Life

Origin and childhood

According to records of the Jesuit missionary Pierre Cholenec (1641-1723) from 1715, Tekakwitha was born around 1656 in the Mohawk settlement of Ossernenon in the later state of New York as the daughter of an Iroquois chief and a Catholic Algonquin . The five tribes of the Iroquois League still lived south of the Great Lakes at that time, the Mohawk, to which Kateri's father belonged, were the easternmost group.

Kateri's mother grew up with French settlers in Trois-Rivières in New France , but around 1653 she was kidnapped by Mohawk. One of their chiefs took her as his wife. She gave birth to Tekakwitha and a boy. But in 1660 she died of smallpox , an epidemic that was often rampant among the Indians and often killed half, sometimes 90% of the tribesmen. Her husband and the last born child probably also died from the disease. Her daughter Tekakwitha, later named Kateri, fell ill but survived.

Tekakwitha survived, but almost went blind (Tekakwitha means 'that bumps into things', 'goes ahead with the hand' or 'pushes ahead', but there are other translation options) and had a face that was badly disfigured by pockmarks. The name “Tekakwitha” was given to her by the Mohawk, “Kateri” is the Mohawk version of Cathérine . The girl was nevertheless taken in by her uncle Atahsà: ta or Kryn, who was an important Mohawk chief. He left the village in 1673 with over 40 people; Tekakwitha's older sister also followed him. He forbade the younger one from going to the missionaries.

French submission, Jesuit mission, first contact

The Collège François-de-Laval, called the Petit Séminaire de Québec until 2011

In New France , the missionary Jesuits under the first Bishop of Québec , Francois de Laval (1623–1708), expanded their activities, often after troops had subjugated the tribes to the French regiment. In 1663 he founded the Séminaire de Québec in order to have trained, local missionaries available, because around 1670 only 7,000 French were living in Canada.

Unlike the rest of the Iroquois, the Mohawk did not want to make peace with the French. French troops were defeated in their first attack, but in 1666, Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy , governor- general of New France, came from Québec with men from the Carignant-Salières regiment to Kateri's village and burned it down. Ossernenon was rebuilt under the name Gandaouagué a little further west on the other side of the Mohawk River (Rivière des Hollandais). The Mohawk had to submit and take missionaries into their villages. The Jesuits sent the Fathers Jacques Frémin, Jacques Bruyas and Jean Pierron, as well as the donnés Charles Boquet and François Poisson. The latter were bound to the Jesuits by contract for life for the Huron mission. They reached Gandaouagué in September 1667. Kateri, who looked after the men, was impressed by their piety and their polite manner. But it was not only influenced from this side. Two-thirds of the residents of Gandaouagué were Algonquin and Huron Catholics , and they knew the Ursulines of Québec.

Baptism, new name, escape

Tekakwitha decided against the will of her relatives for Christianity and a life of virginity "for the sake of the kingdom of heaven", which is why she refused to marry. When a candidate was introduced to her, she left the tent - an event in her life that was later further embellished. In 1675 the Jesuit father Jacques de Lamberville entered her hut for the first time. He baptized her on Easter of the following year; she was given the name Katharina (the pure). After her baptism she was mistreated, threatened with death and ostracized by relatives, according to the Jesuits. on Sundays she was not given anything to eat because she did not work because of the Sunday law . Father de Lamberville advised her to pray and take refuge on the Saint Louis rapids . With the help of three other baptized people, she managed to escape north.

In July 1677 it made its way over a distance of 300 km to the mission station in what is now Montréal . In the Francis Xavier Mission founded in 1676 in Sault-Saint-Louis, today's Kahnawake , she received her first holy communion as early as Christmas 1677 , which was unusual after such a short time.

Reinterpretation of traditions, asceticism, death

A friend of her mother's, Anastasie Tegonhatsiongo (Kanáhstatsi Tekonwatsenhón: ko), became her spiritual leader. She had known them since childhood. Despite her youth, she was accepted into the Confrérie de la Sainte-Famille the following spring . In doing so, she continued to participate in the life of her tribe, including the seasonal hunts that took her far around the country. It was not until 1678 that she stopped these hunting expeditions because she no longer wanted to endure the months of distance from her church. Apparently she was still fought and denounced by her opponents, her sister accused her of embarking on a hunter, but Kateri protested her innocence and the priests believed her that others were trying to persuade P. Cholonec to force her to marry her which he did for a short time. Anastasia also urged her to marry.

During this time Kateri met a Oneida widow named Marie-Thérèse (Wari Teres Tekaien'kwénhtha). Kateri, along with her and another friend of the Hurons, had plans to found a community of Indian sisters on the Île aux Hérons , but one of the Jesuit priests advised her against it. On March 25, 1679, she took the vow of perpetual virginity.

Other women also organized their religious life. Some of them led the daily chants, the women who addressed each other as “sisters” confessed their sins to one another, worked together and tried to help the many poor. One of them was accepted as a nun in the Montréal Hospital.

Kateri worked as a catechist , attended Holy Mass every day and took care of the poor and the sick. In doing so, she subjected herself to such severe mortification that Fr. Lamberville tried to influence her by encouraging her to moderate them. Weakened by privation and an ascetic way of life, Kateri Tekakwitha fell seriously ill in early 1680. On April 16, she received the sacraments of death , and on April 17, 1680, she died at the age of only 24. Her last words were "Jesus, I love you". Eyewitnesses reported that the pockmarks disappeared from her face a few minutes after she died, and that a sweet smell filled the room.

After her death, there was a dispute between the two Jesuits on site about their relics . P. Chauchetière wanted to have her buried in the church, but P. Cholenec initially wanted a burial in the cemetery. Father Chauchetière believed he was present at the death of a saint , as visions told him. Kateri's mentor and maternal friend Anastasia, as well as her friend Marie-Thérèse Tegaiaguenta, were also visited by the dead woman in dreams. Anastasia saw her kneeling in front of her bed with a glowing cross in her hand.

reception

Adoration, patron saint of Canada, beatification

The North American Martyrs Shrine at Auriesville, New York; View over the Mohawk River

Mosaic in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis , Kateri next to St. Fr Isaac Jogues , one of the martyrs of North America. He was canonized in 1930.

Sculpture on the facade of the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Québec

Consecrated Church at Dettah in the Northwest Canadian Territories

and in Michigan

There are three holy shrines for Kateri in the United States alone , which are visited by thousands of pilgrims each year , and the saint is venerated throughout North America. Pilgrims move to Auriesville , where the relics of the North American martyrs are located, for the mission of St. Franz Xaver in Kahnawake (Caughnawaga), where the reliquary of Kateri Tekakwithas stands, or to Fonda , where she was baptized.

As early as the 18th century, Kateri became the model of indigenous Catholicism in North America. P. Cholenec noticed that after death the pockmarks disappeared and a sweet scent filled the room in which it was laid out. In 1683 a prayer addressed to Kateri is said to have saved a group of Jesuits from death in a storm in which the mission church of Kahnawake collapsed for the men. In 1693 André Merlot cured an eye infection by making a novena to Kateri and treating her eyes with a mixture of water, earth from her grave and the ashes of her clothes. In 1696 a canon from Québec reported that a corresponding supplication had freed him from a fever and diarrhea .

The second bishop of Montréal, Jean-Baptiste de La Croix de Saint-Vallier , called her in 1688 the " Genoveva of Canada". He was referring to Genoveva of Paris , the patron saint of the French capital. In 1744, Father Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix said she was generally regarded as the “Patroness of Canada”. In 1943 Pope Pius XII. Kateri Tekakwitha the venerable servant of God .

From the 19th century onwards, North American Catholics in particular turned to the Holy See repeatedly to obtain the beatification of Kateri Tekakwitha. In particular, the Tekakwitha Conference founded in 1939 (which has been called Kateris since 1940), the assembly of Indian Catholics based in Montana , campaigned for this with prayers and public calls for decades. In 1980 the organization set up its center in Great Falls , Montana. Pope John Paul II beatified Kateri Tekakwitha on June 22, 1980. From 1983 the Tekakwithas Conference tried to canonize Kateri on an international level.

Healing miracles, canonization

On December 19, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI. the Church's recognition of a miracle that occurred in 2006, which was traced back to the invocation of the blessed. He canonized Kateri on October 21, 2012.

As the decisive miracle that, except for martyrs , is a prerequisite for the Causes of Saints, the healing of became Lummi viewed boy's, a family member of the tribe, based in the state of Washington Lummi.

The Lummi belong to the coastal Salish , a group of more than 50 Indian ethnic groups living in western North America between British Columbia and Oregon , who traditionally made their living from fishing. They too were affected by the enormous population losses caused by the smallpox epidemics from 1775 onwards.

Six-year-old Jake Finkbonner contracted a serious illness known as necrotizing fasciitis while gambling in 2006 . It is extremely dramatic; it begins with pain and fever, within a short time the affected areas swell and the skin blisters. Jake suffered a progressive death ( necrosis ) of the facial skin, which had to be surgically removed again and again.

Donny and Elsa Finkbonner, the parents, called a priest because the doctors had told them that their son would probably die. They called on the blessed Kateri in prayer, because legend has it that Kateri's pockmarks disappeared from her face after her death. The Kateri Circle at Saint Joachim Church, the reservation church outside Bellingham , prayed for the boy, as did the Assumption Catholic School, which Jake had attended. Through personal contacts, the prayer circles expanded to Denver , and finally to London and Israel .

The nun and chairwoman of the Tekakwitha Conference, Kateri Mitchell, a Mohawk who had adopted the name Kateri as a religious name half a century earlier, also prayed in Great Falls, Montana . She brought a relic with her, the splinter of a hand bone that had come to Montana when Kateri Tekakwitha was last exhumed in 1972. The boy's recovery is said to have taken place after this relic was placed. This was an important prerequisite for the initiation of the process of canonization.

In 2012, more than 2000 Indians traveled to Rome for canonization , the majority Mohawk, from both the United States and Canada. The feast day of the saints in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church is April 17th, and July 14th in North America.

The reactions of the Mohawk, as the New York Times wrote in 2012, were “complex”: “Some were proud that Kateri was a Mohawk. Some questioned the truth of their story as told by the Church. Some hoped the canonization would ease tension between Catholic and traditional American Indians. And others were excited that the Church was in the process of naming their first American Indian holy, even if they wished it had happened sooner. ”For Tom Porter, a traditional Mohawk, it is clear, the same article says, that the saint “was brought up predominantly in our tradition, hence her spirituality is from the old faith”.

Publications, public remembrance

Around 50 biographies of Kateri had been written in ten languages ​​by the end of the 20th century alone . The saint has a special meaning in the 1966 novel by the Canadian writer and singer Leonard Cohen Beautiful Losers . In this, Cohen testifies to a special form of veneration, even among non-Catholics.

The shrine in Fonda, the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine , is located under the eaves of a simple 200 year old barn. Below is a former museum of indigenous artifacts, which was opened by Franciscans in 1938. They had Kateri's former village excavated. The Caughnawaga Indian Village Site , excavated from 1950 onwards , was the only completely excavated Iroquois village, making it worthy of worship to both traditionalists and Catholics. That is why there are crosses and the image of a praying tomcat as well as the traditional medicinal products cedar, tobacco, sage and grass. Prayers to the Great Spirit can be found on the lawn alongside quotes from the Bible. Sage smoke, the Mohawk language and drums are part of the mass today. 680,000 Indians are Catholic today.

In the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco is in of Sacheen Littlefeather led San Francisco Kateri Circle the memory of Tekakwitha preserved.

In Chicago , the Kateri Center deals with the Indian Catholic population, who made up 0.5% of the city's population in 2010. In Kanahwake, the local hospital is called Kateri tekakwitha , and a school there also bears her name.

Scientific reception, historical requirements

In her biography, religious-political disputes such as those that dominated the debates between and in the French and English-speaking parts of Canada time and again up to the end of the 20th century, but also ethnic conflicts and cultural contacts, the consequences of cultural uprooting, reorientation or adaptation and reinterpretation also analyze ideas about the understanding of the roles of the sexes, which have repeatedly been projected back into the past, as well as the history of indigenous spirituality under colonial rule and syncretism.

North American historiography, which dealt with the relationship between women and mission, has long ignored both the Mohawk and the kateri. They even do not mention the American foundational works by Eleanor Leacock , Karen Anderson or Carol Devens. Leacock and Devens limited themselves to the Montagnais or Innu , Anderson to Innu and Hurons or Wyandot .

At this point in time, the perspective was on the one hand on the erosion policy of the missionaries towards the indigenous cultures and their assimilation policy as well as the collaboration between the feudal regiment and the order. Another focus was the role of the fur trade and the spiritual, political and economic role of women in this process, which prompted numerous peoples to migrate widely and set in motion diverse cultural adaptation processes. Research has shown that the social status of women in Tekakwitha's time was undermined by missionaries and fur traders alike, as they brought with them their role model, which was shaped by feudal France. The internal perspective of the indigenous peoples came into play only from the 1980s with their own works.

But Kateri did not fit into the cliché of the Indian woman oppressed by missionaries, nor that of the rebel against colonial power or cultural superiority. The idea of ​​a complete cultural rupture, triggered by colonial power and mission, also did not quite fit her biography.

Apparently she was forced to face rapidly changing, sometimes catastrophic situations and to behave in them. The outside world fell upon the young woman in a cascade of disasters. Her family was wiped out by smallpox, her mother's tribe was a stranger to her, her father's in a state of dissolution and split between English, Dutch and French interests and between the denominations. At the same time, the mission brought with it patriarchal ideas, in which women were assigned certain roles, roles that Kateri had vehemently rejected even before she turned to Christianity. For her, the intended role as a wife was not an option either with the Mohawk or even with the French, but the Jesuits offered women who refused to marry an opportunity to develop. In 1639 the first Ursulines came to Québec. They could serve as role models for Indian women, because they healed in the hospital and they obviously had a great influence in the small French society, however incomprehensible to the Mohawk.

Conversely, Baroque French Catholicism saw female saints and Mary, Jesus' mother, as central figures of worship, who in turn perceived indigenous people to be powerful. The Jesuits also especially venerated the holy virgins of the Church. The Mohawk constantly reinterpreted this religious “tool kit” (shoemaker), and it surprisingly offered women access to prestige and influence, even those who saw no perspective in their traditional surroundings. Kateri was one of these in particular.

At that time, the Jesuits were still moving on extremely unsafe ground. They had come to Québec in 1625, but France had lost the colony to the English and Huguenots in 1629 . The colony could only be reorganized in 1632. Nevertheless, it was hardly possible to win over French people who wanted to settle in New France. In 1630 Québec had just 100 inhabitants, this number rose to 359 by 1640. Even around 1700, Montréal had only 1,300 people in fewer than 200 houses. But this changed noticeably in Kateri's time, especially since Intendant Jean Talon (1665 to 1672) tried to permanently resettle as many of the soldiers assigned to New France as possible. He also otherwise supported the settlement policy. By 1673 the population grew by around 9,000 people. On the other hand, the English founded the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670 , which soon competed with the French.

Until then, the great tribes of the Iroquois, which included the Mohawk and who lived south of the Great Lakes, numbered tens of thousands. This alone gave them considerable military superiority, which they exploited to destroy the Hurons as allies of the French. For the first time, some of them settled on Canadian soil. But severe smallpox epidemics preceded the Europeans who introduced the disease, and these soon collapsed the numbers of the Iroquois and many other tribes. In 1634 more than half of the Mohawk fell victim to the first smallpox epidemic. The robbery that brought Kateri's mother to the Iroquois took place during the Iroquois expansion. The second epidemic raged in 1661–63, killing another thousand people in addition to Kateri's family. In 1667 the French managed to conclude a peace treaty with the Iroquois, but in 1683 another war began, which only ended in 1701. Catholic Indians and all the enemies of the Iroquois supported the French. By the end of the century, there were only two Mohawk villages left in New York State.

The French colonial policy pursued quite clear, if only very difficult to achieve goals. The royal protection meant that the feudal system of the mother country (Coutume de Paris) was to be transferred to the colony in order to divide the land into manors, which were farmed by people who were in a service and tax relationship with a landlord. The Jesuit mission was also financed in this way, with food and building materials. Paris hoped that it would ease the desolate military situation. The principle that emerged from the confessional wars was also valid that only Catholics were allowed to live in New France. But from 1628 to 1663 the French territories were under the trading company Compagnie de la Nouvelle France and not directly under the French crown, so that the colonial power on the ground had only limited funds available.

That changed with Jean Talon. In 1667, Father Pierre Raffeix and some French families founded La Prairie de la Magdeleine near Montréal. The first indigenous inhabitants were Oneida Iroquois and adopted Hurons. In 1676, the mission requested new land and relocated to the Sault-Saint-Louis rapids or Lachine rapids. In 1677 this settlement consisted of 22 longhouses, each led by two headmen of the Hurons and the Iroquois. However, with the arrival of Mohawk, they soon gained the upper hand, and their language prevailed. This is how today's Kahnawake (on the rapids) came about. In 1676, Sulpizians also founded a mission on Mont Royal , on the Île de Montréal , on which the city of Montréal is located.

But Kateri's Vita and the tradition that goes with it are not only shaped by these world and local political, ethnic and missionary requirements. The Jesuits had certain ideas about what a saint's life should look like. Virginity, religious devotion, mortification, but also giving up worldly property to the poor were important criteria for such a life, as were miracles after their death. Catherine Gandeacteua, the founder of the village of La Prairie, had brought with her an important prerequisite for worship when she gave everything away. This was apparently clear to the contemporaries, because while the Indians wanted to bury them, the Jesuits consequently claimed their dead body as a relic . There were no relics in the whole of New France at that time, and the need must have been great, even if it was only as dust from the grave of the venerated. In any case, Catherine's body stayed in La Prairie and the Jesuits prevailed.

A similar model was followed in Kahnawake. There, however, the focus was on self-mortification, not voluntary poverty. Apparently several women went this way. At Christmas 1676 one of them went to the cemetery and stood naked in front of the cross there. As Claude Chauchetière reported in a letter dated October 14, 1682, the pregnant woman stood in the snow and almost died with her child. Four other women followed their example and developed new ways of poenity . Kateri came to this climate through her flight, but the mortifications there increased even more after her untimely death.

In 1680 it appeared to the Jesuits as if the devil was now responsible for mortification, which in their eyes was grossly exaggerated. Some of the women threw themselves under the winter ice in the river, a mother immersed her six-year-old daughter in it. She did this not to punish the child for sins committed, but for future sins that she would commit as an adult. Men and women scourged themselves with thorns, sticks, nettles, and Kateri slept on thorns for three nights in a row. Some fasted continuously even when they had to work hard. Still others put glowing coals between their fingers, they went barefoot on winter processions, they cut their hair and disfigured themselves so as not to have to get married. Eventually the Holy Spirit “enlightened them” so that these excesses disappeared. But the probing questions about it, which occasionally embarrassed the Jesuits, remained.

The Jesuits, who kept their clothes as “black coats” (in contrast to China, where they also evangelized since Matteo Ricci ), were often revered like shamans. They could predict solar eclipses , they knew visions that the Mohawk called dreams, and they had healing rituals such as prayer and song, as well as bloodletting and ritual tools. If the Jesuits failed in the eyes of the Mohawk, they were incompetent shamans or they used their “magic” to cause damage, which could be life-threatening for the Jesuits. So in 1646 Father Isaac Jogues died because the Mohawk accused him of magic, which they believed had destroyed the harvest. The Iroquois, however, knew other points of contact and similarities. They also had healing societies, such as the false faces , who had their own knowledge and performed rituals. Saints could be interpreted as guardian spirits, they also knew stones or feathers as physical means to gain access to the spiritual world, just as the Jesuits knew relics. However, the Jesuits believed that only humans have souls or a spirit, while the Iroquois also believed that animals or things. About Orenda , the power of spirits, few people could have; In the eyes of the Jesuits, this was only done by martyrs or saints with their divine power. Fasting and sexual abstinence were regarded by Jesuits and Iroquois as sources of strength, even if the Iroquois had little understanding of lifelong abstinence.

Claude Chauchetière played a major role in the success of the local missionary work, which was one of the few to have long-term existence. In the mission and the control of the community, he acted less with theological arguments than with rituals and often self-drawn pictures, especially those of hell he considered particularly effective with the “savages”. In addition, they were able to build on many of the stories known to the Mohawk with biblical and saint stories, especially since these also knew a story of creation and a virgin conception. The matrilineal Iroquois, however, were more likely to warm to the Holy Family , especially Mary and her mother Anna , than to the Catholic family with the man as master. So the Jesuits founded a brotherhood of the Holy Family in the village. Chauchetière had lost his mother at the age of nine and his father at 16; much later he wrote to his brother about his life, how providence had worked in it, and how important her father had been until that catastrophic year of famine in which he had died in 1662. His death became the starting point for his entry into the Jesuit order. He describes Kateri's death as one of the most important turning points in his life. In a letter from 1694 he called his community "Cathérines tribe". He himself believed that she had saved him several times after her death.

When Tekakwitha was baptized, Catherine of Siena was a role model for her, one of the virgins of the church, whose way of life and strict asceticism she pursued. Through syncretistic reinterpretations of baptism, virginity, Christian society and extreme self-mortification, Kateri was able to appear holy and Christian in the French-dominated society, but at the same time achieved a high status and increased self-awareness in the Iroquois society, which had begun a syncretistic world of faith to develop.

swell

Translation of Cholenec's work in Algonquin, 1876

The sources for Kateri's history can be found in The Positio of the Historical Section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites on the Introduction of the Cause for Beatification and Canonization and on the Virtues of the Servant of God: Katharine Tekakwitha, The Life of the Mohawks , New York 1940. P. Cholenec, the head of the Kahnawake mission station, wrote four Viten Kateris, which largely correspond. The version from 1696 is the most extensive. A letter from 1715, on the other hand, is terse and less flowery. As early as 1685 he wrote a life story, which was revised or supplemented in 1695. Cholenec, Chauchetière and Frémin did not write a vita, but Chauchetière wrote a rich history of his community. It is based on the Jesuit relations and the related documents that Reuben Gold Thwaites published under the title The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France 1610-1791 between 1896 and 1901.

• Claude Chauchetière in Annual Narratives of the Mission of the Sault, from the Foundation until the Year 1686. In: Reuben Gold Thwaites (Ed.): The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. New York 1959, OCLC 11969018 .
• Letter IV. From Father Cholonec, Missionary of the Society of Jesus, to Father Augustin Le Blanc of the Same Society, Procurator of Missions in Canada. In: William Ingraham Kip (ed.): The Early Jesuit Missions in North America. Wiley and Putnam, New York 1847, OCLC 83370137 , pp. 81-116.

literature

More than 300 titles were published by 2009 alone, and this number has increased considerably since the canonization. Therefore only a selection can be made here.

• Édouard Lecompte: Une vièrge iroquoise, Catherine Tekakwitha: Le lis des bords de la Mohawk et du Saint-Laurent, 1656–1680. Montréal 1930.
• Guilberte C. Bouvier: Kateri Tekakwitha. La plus belle fleur épanouie au bord du Saint-Laurent. Montréal 1939.
• Edward-Xavier Evans: The literature relative to Katheri Tekakwitha. In: BRH. 46 (1940), pp. 193-209, 241-255.
• Édouard Lecompte: Glory of the Mohawks, the life of the venerable Catharine Tekakwitha. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 1944.
• Justin C. Steurer: The impact of Katharine Tekakwitha on American spiritual life. Washington, DC 1957.
• Franz Weiser : The girl of the mohawks. Christiana-Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-7171-0899-9 .
• Kay I. Koppedrayer: The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin. Early Jesuit Biographies of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. In: Ethnohistory. 40.2 (1993) 277-306.
• Allan Greer: Mohawk Saint. Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Molly Richard: A Study of the Relationship Between Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha and the United Houma Nation. The University of Southern Mississippi 2012. (examines types, causes, and history of worship among the United Houma Nation in Louisiana )
• Nancy Shoemaker: Kateri Tekakwitha's Tortuous Path to Sainthood. In: Mary-Ellen Kelm, Lorna Townsend (Ed.): In the Days of Our Grandmothers. A Reader in Aboriginal Women's History in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2006, pp. 93-116.
• Markus Luber: The holy, wild Mohawk virgin Kateri Tekakwitha. A dialogue between ethnology and theology. In: Anthropos 110,1 (2015), pp. 125–144.

Web links

Commons : Kateri Tekakwitha  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Kateri Tekakwitha . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
• In Her Footsteps. The Story of Kateri Tekakwitha , Lily of the Mohawks , Canonization
• Biography on /www.tekakwitha.org
• National Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda, New York (English)
• Literature by and about Kateri Tekakwitha in the catalog of the German National Library
• Vatican honors Indian woman. The holy lily of the Mohawk. In: Spiegel online. October 14, 2012.
• Biography of the Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Conservation Center
• Darren Bonaparte: A Lily Among Thorns. The Mohawk Repatriation of Káteri Tekahkwí: tha , June 5, 2009 (Bonaparte is Mohawk)

Remarks

1. ↑ Press Office of the Holy See .
2. ↑ Katharina Tekakwitha - Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints . Website of the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
3. ↑ This seems uncertain, as Allan Greer: Mohawk Saint. Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. Oxford University Press 2005, p. 14 noted.
4. ^ Jamie S. Scott: The Religions of Canadians. University of Toronto Press 2012, pp. 45f.
5. ↑ Nancy Shoemaker: Kateri Tekakwitha's Tortuous Path to Sainthood. In: Mary-Ellen Kelm, Lorna Townsend (Ed.): In the Days of Our Grandmothers. A Reader in Aboriginal Women's History in Canada , University of Toronto Press 2006, pp. 93–116, here: p. 93.
6. ↑ Allan Greer: Mohawk Saint. Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. Oxford University Press 2005, pp. 18f.
7. ↑ Isaac Jogues . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
8. ^ Nancy Shoemaker: Kateri Tekakwitha's Tortuous Path to Sainthood , in: Mary-Ellen Kelm, Lorna Townsend (ed.): In the Days of Our Grandmothers. A Reader in Aboriginal Women's History in Canada , University of Toronto Press, 2006, pp. 93–116, here: pp. 93 f.
9. ^ Tekakwithas Conference .
10. ↑ Andreas Resch: Die Blessed Johannes Pauls II. 1979–1985 , Resch, 2000, p. 16.
11. ↑ Press Office of the Holy See .
12. ^ Proclamation of the Faith for Adults, German Edition of the Dutch Catechism , Utrecht 1968, p. 121.
13. ↑ Description based on The Seattle Miracle. In: Bill Donahue: The Secret World of Saints. Inside the Catholic Church and the Mysterious Process of Anointing the Holy Dead , San Francisco 2011.
14. ^ Turtle Island Indigenous Flock to Vatican to Witness Kateri Tekakwitha's Canonization , Indian Country, October 21, 2012.
15. ↑ Katharina Tekakwitha - Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints . Website of the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints. Retrieved October 21, 2012.
16. ↑ "Some are proud, because Kateri was a Mohawk. Some doubt the truthfulness of her story as told by the church. Some hope the canonization will ease tensions between Catholic and traditional American Indians. And some are euphoric that the church is about to name its first American Indian saint, even if they wish it had happened sooner. ”(New York Times, July 24, 2012).
17. ^ Complex Emotions Over First American Indian Saint. In: New York Times. July 24, 2012.
18. ↑ What would Dingen Littlefeather say? at nativetimes.com, accessed January 9, 2013.
19. ↑ Welcome to the San Francisco Kateri Circle ( Memento of the original dated November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at human2human.org, accessed January 9, 2013. 
20. ^ Andrew Newman: Fulfilling the Name: Catherine Tekakwitha and Marguerite Kanenstenhawi (Eunice Williams). In: Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers. 28.2 (2011), pp. 232-256.
21. ^ Eleanor Leacock: Women and Colonization. Anthropological Perspectives. New York 1980 and Montagnais Women and the Jesuit Program for Colonization. In: Eleanor Leacock (Ed.): Myths of Male Dominance. Collected Articles on Women Cross-culturally , New York 1981, pp. 43-62.
22. ^ Karen Anderson: Chain Her by One Foot. The Subjugation of Native Women in Seventeenth Century New France. New York 1991.
23. ↑ Carol Devens: Countering Colonizsation. Native American Women and Great Lakes Mission, 1630-1900. University of California Press 1992.
24. ^ Lisa Frink, Kathryn Weedman: Gender and Hide Production. Lanham 2005, pp. 206f.
25. ^ Donald F. Bibeau: Fur Trade Literature from a Tribal Point of View: A Critique. In: Thomas C. Buckley (Ed.): Rendezvous: Selected Papers of the Fourth North American Fur Trade Conference, 1981 , North American Fur Trade Conference, St. Paul 1983, pp. 83-92.
26. ↑ Allan Greer: Peasant, Lord, and Merchant. Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes 1740-1840. Toronto 1985, p. 92.
27. ↑ Allan Greer: Mohawk Saint. Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. Oxford University Press 2005, pp. 9f.
28. ^ Reuben Gold Thwaites (Ed.): The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents : Travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. Cleveland, 1896-1901, Vol. 52, 1900, pp. 14f.
29. ↑ Isaac Jogues . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
30. ↑ Allan Greer: Mohawk Saint. Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. Oxford University Press 2005, p. 15.
31. ^ Reuben Gold Thwaites (Ed.): The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. Cleveland, 1896-1901, Vol. 64, 1900, p. 123.
32. ^ Reuben Gold Thwaites (Ed.): The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. Cleveland, 1896-1901, Vol. 64, 1900, p. 153.
33. ^ Reuben Gold Thwaites under the title The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France 1610-1791. Vol. 63, pp. 141-245.