Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon in present-day northern New York State. Her father was a high-ranking Mohawk chief, but her mother was Algonquin, a captive taken in a recent war, who had been catechized and baptized by French Jesuits. No one knows what mysterious communication took place between mother and daughter during the first four years of Tekakwitha's life. But it was through her own mother that Jesus first looked upon Tekakwitha with love.
Her parents died in a ravaging smallpox epidemic in 1660, and she was adopted by her uncle. Although she was scarred and partially blinded by the disease, Tekakwitha leamed to embroider and sew and carry out the tasks expected of a girl of high rank, and in due time her adoptive family sought to arrange a worthy marriage for her. But the young girl spurned all their efforts. They did not understand that she had already been touched and called by her true Spouse. The seed planted by her mother was growing in the secret depths of her soul.
A generation before Tekakwitha's birth, Jesuit missionaries were martyred by the Mohawks. But their blood would bear fruit. The missions continued in the region and the faith began to take root among the surrounding peoples. Following a treaty with the French, missionaries had begun to make converts among the Mohawks as well, and Tekakwitha no doubt heard the new Christians speak about the Creator who sent his Son into the world. She heard them sing Christian hymns in her native tongue. She embraced all that she learned in this way, and knew that it was God himself whom she truly loved. Thus, beginning with her mother, Jesus drew the heart of Tekakwitha to himself through the witness of her own people.
Nevertheless, she was a chief's daughter living a guarded and secluded life. But when Father Jacques de Lamberville came as missionary to her village, Tekakwitha was longing and praying to be able to meet him. It is not surprising that, one spring day in 1675, as he passed by what he thought was an empty dwelling, he felt called to enter. He was surprised to encounter this modest eighteen-year-old girl who opened her heart to him and told him of her burning desire to become a Christian. The next year she was baptized Catherine (Kateri in Mohawk).
She soon went to live in a village of converts called Kahnawake, near Montreal. Here she learned about the vocation to consecrated life. In 1679, Kateri Tekakwitha openly expressed her decision to take Jesus as her Spouse. She died the next year, the first Native American consecrated virgin, with the fire of her love having made a profound impact on her fellow converts and on the missionaries who knew her. That impact continues to grow even to this day.
