Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits

The daughter of a Algonquin mother and an Iroquois father, Catherine/Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) has become known over the centuries as a Catholic convert so holy that, almost immediately upon her death, she became the object of a cult. Today she is revered as a patron saint by Native Americans and the patroness of ecology and the environment by Catholics more generally, the first Native North American proposed for sainthood.
Tekakwitha was born at a time of cataclysmic change, as Native...