The history of Christianity in North America is rich with stories of patron saints and martyrs, who are celebrated today for their inspiring heroics and acts of piousness. However, for every famous North American Martyr, there are numerous Indigenous saints whose stories are yet to be revered by Christians today. Among them is St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first canonized Indigenous saint, and a shining example of fortitude and relentlessness in the face of religious persecution.

Born in 1656 in what is now the hamlet of Auriesville, New York, Kateri was the daughter of a Mohawk father and a Christianized Algonquin mother. At four years old, she became the last surviving member of her family following a smallpox outbreak that ravaged her village. She was afflicted with the disease, which left her physically scarred and permanently visually impaired. In 1666, France launched a conquest on the land of the Mohawks, forcing Kateri to flee from her home and seek refuge with what remained of her people at Gandaouagué, situated across the Mohawk River.

The following year, three Jesuit missionaries arrived in the area and established the St. Pierre Mission, which Kateri joined after befriending one of the missionaries, Father Jacques de Lamberville, when she was 11. At the age of 20, Kateri finally revealed her desire to answer God’s calling to Father Jacques and to receive her first sacrament of baptism. So, on Easter of 1676, de Lamberville taught her the catechism and had her baptized as “Catherine” after the famous 15th-century Italian mystic Catherine of Siena. She would subsequently receive her first communion in 1677.

Kateri’s conversion did not sit well with her Algonquin and Mohawk contemporaries. At Gandaouagué, she was subjected to harassment and frequent stonings, which forced her to flee 320 kilometres to the Indigenous mission of St. Francis Xavier at Sault Saint-Louis, near Montreal, with the help of de Lamberville. It was at this mission where Kateri earned her title “Lady of the Mohawks” because of her compassion, piety, and mettle despite her unpopularity amongst her own people. Moreover, Kateri would also join a group of Christianized Iroquois who practiced chastity and mortification during her stay there. Dedicating herself to God, Kateri would practice several acts of self-discipline, from fasting to extensive prayer.

Due to her slowly deteriorating health caused by her disciplinary practices, Kateri Tekakwitha would peacefully pass away on April 17, 1680. Firsthand accounts of her final weeks claim that she radiated a mysterious light as she was flagellating herself, and that fifteen minutes after her death, Kateri’s smallpox scars faded away, leaving a face that shone with beauty.

Centuries after her death, on January 3, 1943, Pope Pius XII declared the Lady of the Mohawks venerable, and she was beatified on June 22, 1980, by Pope John Paul II.

Decades later, on December 19, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI recognized the validity of a miracle ascribed to Kateri, wherein a young boy named Jake Finkbonner from the state of Washington had his affliction of necrotizing fasciitis, or “flesh-eating disease,” miraculously removed by reasons that could not be explained by modern medicine.

On October 21, 2012, Kateri “Catherine” Tekakwitha was finally canonized by the Catholic Church, making her the first of numerous Indigenous and Native American saints who are just as historically significant as North America’s other saints and martyrs millions of Christians continue to look up to today.