Althouse: Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks...

October 21, 2012

Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks...

... the first Native American saint.

26 comments:

Farmer said...: Very cool. Read The Frontiersmen and try to imagine what life must have been like for her.; 10/21/12, 11:23 AM
YoungHegelian said...: When I was a kid in northern Alabama the local Catholic summer day camp was called "Camp Tekakwitha" (60's-early 70's), so her stock has been high for quite some time among the American Church.

We could also buy at school a Catholic comic book called "Treasure Chest", which was actually pretty good as a comic book (and, trust me, I read tons of comics as a boy). It had a long series on the Jesuit missionization of the Hurons/Iriquois/Algonquins and their story on Tekakwitha was pretty clear even in 1967 that she was beatification material.; 10/21/12, 11:27 AM
edutcher said...: She was in the middle of a century-long war for the conquest of North America.

Her faith must have been a great comfort.; 10/21/12, 11:28 AM
rhhardin said...: A much needed boost to casinos.; 10/21/12, 11:33 AM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: @Young Hegelian

Wasn't it Treasure Chest that had a continuing series about what life would be like if the Soviets took over the US? I remember that kids would be forced into day care centers, and Catholics would be placed in concentration camps. Pretty scary.

Sister Miriam Jogues told us in second grade not to buy Dr. Seuss books, since he was a communist and would use the money to buy tractors for Cuba. Sister Miriam, of the fine American order the Maryknolls, took her name from Isaac Jogues, a French missionary who had his fingers chewed off by the Iroquois.; 10/21/12, 11:42 AM
Darrell said...: Too bad you couldn't listen to Sister Miriam Jogues.

What has it got you?; 10/21/12, 11:48 AM
Unknown said...: For Catholics only. In the Orthodox church, we have at least two Native American saints: St. Peter the Aleut and St. Jacob Netsvetov are the most prominent.; 10/21/12, 11:56 AM
YoungHegelian said...: @tyrone,

Wasn't it Treasure Chest that had a continuing series about what life would be like if the Soviets took over the US? I remember that kids would be forced into day care centers, and Catholics would be placed in concentration camps. Pretty scary.

Not that I ever read, but maybe before my time, since TC was around for a long time before I came along. Maybe that's where "Red Dawn" was born....

As for nuns telling kids that Dr. Seuss was a commie, I never ran into that either. Remember, I didn't grow up in a midwestern or northeastern ethnic Catholic community. I was in majority Protestant northern Alabama, and we were a small minority of imports. All of my nuns and lay teachers were SOLIDLY midwestern Democrats. I never heard a racist or anti-Semitic remark in 8 years of school (well, my French mother made anti-Semitic remarks, but not my teachers). None of them would have dismissed Dr. Seuss for being a commie simp, even if he was.

I realize that this is a minority experience in American Catholicism, but it was mine.; 10/21/12, 12:02 PM
Anonymous said...: Leonard Cohen wrote his experimental novel, "Beautiful Losers," in part about Catherine Tekakwitha. It was wild book alernating a complex sexual triangle between a scholar, his wife and their sex maniac friend, F., interleaved with reverential passages about Tekakwitha's life.

As a kid in parochial school, I loved Leonard Cohen, but I couldn't figure out "Beautiful Losers."

Cohen published "Beautiful Losers" to critical acclaim and lousy sales. It was then he decided the life of a writer wouldn't pay his bills and decided to move to Nashville -- such was his plan -- to become a country singer, but he was waylaid in New York City by the emerging folk and rock scenes and became Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter, instead.; 10/21/12, 12:31 PM
traditionalguy said...: What a waste. The cost of her travel to speak for Obama could have kept Fluck in contraceptives for her fecund lifetime, and thus protected her from a life as a Patriarchal slave baby maker.; 10/21/12, 12:32 PM
William said...: I think the Catholic Church can learn something from the Nobel people. The Church should have beatified Obama and put him on the path to sainthood. I know that they don't usually do this with living figures and non-Catholics, but it's the exception that makes the rule.; 10/21/12, 12:38 PM
Sydney said...: We stopped at her shrine in upstate New York this summer on the way home from Troy. It is a uniquely American scene. The church is a circular building, with a circular dais in the center. In the center of the dais is a wooden fort-like structure that is supposed to represent the pallisades of the village that once stood there. At each of the four corners of the fort is a statue of one of the Jesuits who was martyred there and Kateri Tekakwitha. There are four altars around the wooden fort each facing a different direction- East, West, North, South. At the foot of the dais there are mounted relics of the martyrs and Kateri Tekakwitha, but also mementos from European saints, as if the immigrants who came later to the area added their heritage to the church as well. Such a melting pot! We didn't attend a mass, so not sure how those four altars work out in real time.

Here's their website, though they don't really have any good photographs of the altar. Her name, Tekakwitha, means "She who bumps into things." A smallpox infection made her nearly blind as a child.; 10/21/12, 12:43 PM
YoungHegelian said...: @William,

I think the Catholic Church can learn something from the Nobel people

Yeah, and the Church can give the winners indulgences. The winner gets into Heaven, no embarrassing questions asked, the RCC keeps its cold, hard cash.

It a win-win all around.

Unlike those dumb-ass lutefisk chompers handing out their cash (can one "chomp" lutefisk?)!; 10/21/12, 12:46 PM
Roger J. said...: Young Hegelian--I think you are right re lutefisk--one mushes it; it is not chomped. And my view of the Viking raids in Europe was they were all due to lutefisk--they could go out raiding in small boats and face an uncertain and stay home and be faced with lutefisk for supper--thus are 400 years of early european history are explained. Lutefisk.; 10/21/12, 12:54 PM
bearing said...: St. Kateri, pray for us.; 10/21/12, 12:59 PM
Fernandinande said...: "...the first Native American saint. "

Nope.

wikipedia: "Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, S.C., (August 28, 1774 – January 4, 1821) was the first native-born citizen of the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church (September 14, 1975)."; 10/21/12, 1:09 PM
Anonymous said...: I went to a parochial grade school and took out Dr. Seuss books from the school library. And, unlike YH,I did grow up in a Midwestern and heavily Catholic area. I've never before heard of nuns warning kids of the evils of Dr. Seuss.

I wonder if St.Tekakwitha is an ancestor of Elizabeth Warren, the Lily of Harvard Yard.; 10/21/12, 1:54 PM
McTriumph said...: Maryknolls, weren't they the liberationist theologians that the caused all the trouble in Central America in the 80s and the Vatican stomped on.

I never had a nun or lay teacher ever tell me not to read something. The first Playboy I ever saw was in the backseat of Father Dirken's Impala. An avid golfer, we alter boys called him the "tap dancing priest" due to his wearing his black and white wingtip golf shoes to say Mass.; 10/21/12, 2:15 PM
ricpic said...: Tekakwitha in a double commode maybe.; 10/21/12, 2:22 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Mother (now Saint) Marianne Cope made the grade, too.

Read the bio here. She certainly did some moral heavy lifting in her day.; 10/21/12, 2:27 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Oh, but Mother Cope had her dark side, too.

When King Kalakaua was worried that the gays would turn the beaches of Oahu into P'town-on-the- Pacific just like they had turned Molakai into Mountain of Fire Island, he turned to the ever resourceful Mother Cope.

She sprang into action and set up a battalion sized Special Ops unit within the Sisters of St. Francis armed with spear fishing guns to patrol the beaches of Oahu. They were known on the beaches as the "Penguin Patrol" because of their full-length habits. Woe be unto the buff piece of trade wearing a mankini that they ever found on the beach!

They kept the beaches of Oahu high-camp free for decades. Their patrols came to a sudden end, however, when, after Pearl Harbor, the Military Provost shut them down claiming they couldn't lose any more sailors, as each & every man was needed for the war effort.

This is all true. Just ask Andy.; 10/21/12, 2:37 PM
D. B. Light said...: She's not the first Native American saint -- just the first Roman Catholic Native American saint. Mary Brant [Konwatsi'tsiaienni], another Mohawk woman, sister of Joseph Brant and common law wife of Sir William Johnson, has long been recognized in the Calendar of Saints of the Episcopalian Church of Canada.; 10/21/12, 3:00 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Rumor has it the pope phoned Elisabeth Warren... and said he done all he could for her.; 10/21/12, 3:09 PM
Sam L. said...: Then there are the Black Viking descendants, who eat lutefisk and chittlins.; 10/21/12, 4:51 PM
Gabriel Hanna said...: This isn't true at all. I'm not religious at all but I've heard of Peter the Aleut, an Orthodox saint, and Juan Diego, who saw Our Lady of Guadalupe. Were they not Native Americans? Journalistic ignorance wins again.; 10/21/12, 4:52 PM
Bender said...: There have been other indiginous people from the Americas who have been canonized, Juan Diego a prime example. But St. Kateri is the first indiginous from the United States. Note however that canonization does not create a saint, it only recognizes the sainthood of the person. There are many many saints who have not been officially recognized, nameless, faceless people who lived their entire lives in obscurity, probably including a number of Native Americans.; 10/21/12, 5:01 PM