Born a Mohawk
Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be canonised, lived a heroic life on the borders between the Church and a thoroughly non-Catholic civilisation.
She was born around 1656 in present-day New York state, the daughter of a Mohawk chief, Keneronkwa, and Tagasjouita, who had been captured from the Algonquins. A smallpox epidemic killed her parents and her brother when she was only four. It left her with facial scars, and in her teens she would cover her head with a blanket.
