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Saint Kateri: Lily of the Mohawks
This authoritative account of the first Native American woman to be venerated in the Church is sure to inspire you. Discover Kateri Tekakwitha's faith and fidelity in the face of overwhelming hostility and her own debilitating illnesses. It will inspire you as you seek God's grace to overcome challenges in your own life The daughter of a Mohawk chief and a Roman Catholic mother, Kateri (baptized Catherine) Tekakwitha (1656-1680) forms a unique bridge between the Native American community and the Church. Kateri was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980 and canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.
Written by experienced and prolific authors Matthew and Margaret Bunson, Saint Kateri: Lily of the Mohawks is the most definitive biography of Kateri Tekakwitha.
Explore the unique experiences in early American history where the lives and cultures of the Mohawk village and French Jesuit missionaries intermingled and co-existed.
Written by experienced and prolific authors Matthew and Margaret Bunson, Saint Kateri: Lily of the Mohawks is the most definitive biography of Kateri Tekakwitha.
Explore the unique experiences in early American history where the lives and cultures of the Mohawk village and French Jesuit missionaries intermingled and co-existed.
244 pages, Paperback
First published September 5, 2010
11 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Bunson
51 books14 followersMatthew Bunson (born 1966) is an American author of more than fifty books, a historian, professor, editor, Roman Catholic theologian, Senior Contributor for EWTN, the Catholic multimedia network, Senior Fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and Faculty Chair at Catholic Distance University.
He is the author of the books Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, The Vampire Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, and Pope Francis, the first English-language biography of Pope Francis in 2013.
Bunson has a B.A. in history, an M.A. in Theology, a Master of Divinity, a Doctorate in Ministry and a Ph.D. in Church History from the Graduate Theological Foundation. He is on the faculty of the Catholic Distance University where he teaches Church History, including Roman Catholic-Islamic relations and Medieval and American Catholic History, and Catholic Social Teaching. He is a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
He is the author of the books Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, The Vampire Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, and Pope Francis, the first English-language biography of Pope Francis in 2013.
Bunson has a B.A. in history, an M.A. in Theology, a Master of Divinity, a Doctorate in Ministry and a Ph.D. in Church History from the Graduate Theological Foundation. He is on the faculty of the Catholic Distance University where he teaches Church History, including Roman Catholic-Islamic relations and Medieval and American Catholic History, and Catholic Social Teaching. He is a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 9, 2025
This is such a lovely introduction to the life of St. Kateri. Apparently I am unknowingly drawn to mystics as my patron saint, St. Therese, is called Kateri’s spiritual sister due to their similar lives. Both died at 24 of great illness and yet were peaceful and obedient to God without fear. They lived pure lives and followed God in their daily routines not in grand missions.
I do not know if or when I’ll have a daughter, but I think I may name her Kateri. Kateri has inspired me and I hope that she will be a model to my daughter of faith. Faith no matter what. Someone who runs away from their culture and rejects their sins of the past and pursues unity with God in silence and in work. Kateri never did anything without prayer, without unity with God in her heart and mind.
She was a woman convicted of singleness, or rather marriage with Christ. She even when she could not join an order made a vow of her own and loved it out with two other friends who would speak of the Lord and his people all day long.
I am so thankful that this book also dives into the context of North America as a whole before her life in the mid 1600s and her impact after death. I loved also learning about the North American Martyrs, brave men who saw death in spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Lastly, I am so inspired by the indigenous people of North America who have kept connected to their culture when possible and also their Catholic faith. I am so glad that we have a saint from this continent that can intercede for the great difficulties natives have dealt with through the years. The book does a wonderful job of maintaining the dignity of native peoples and also the beauty of the Catholic faith. The Sault Mission is a beautiful place where natives could live together as a tribe from many warring tribes together in Christian charity bound together by the church and faith that inspired those back in Europe.
I do not know if or when I’ll have a daughter, but I think I may name her Kateri. Kateri has inspired me and I hope that she will be a model to my daughter of faith. Faith no matter what. Someone who runs away from their culture and rejects their sins of the past and pursues unity with God in silence and in work. Kateri never did anything without prayer, without unity with God in her heart and mind.
She was a woman convicted of singleness, or rather marriage with Christ. She even when she could not join an order made a vow of her own and loved it out with two other friends who would speak of the Lord and his people all day long.
I am so thankful that this book also dives into the context of North America as a whole before her life in the mid 1600s and her impact after death. I loved also learning about the North American Martyrs, brave men who saw death in spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Lastly, I am so inspired by the indigenous people of North America who have kept connected to their culture when possible and also their Catholic faith. I am so glad that we have a saint from this continent that can intercede for the great difficulties natives have dealt with through the years. The book does a wonderful job of maintaining the dignity of native peoples and also the beauty of the Catholic faith. The Sault Mission is a beautiful place where natives could live together as a tribe from many warring tribes together in Christian charity bound together by the church and faith that inspired those back in Europe.
February 27, 2013
As an introduction to St. Kateri Takekwitha it served me well. And depending on the time elapse between her life time and her time of canonization the meager information that remained in the writings of the French Jesuit missionary priests are carefully organized to present the life story of Kateri. The lack of historical details is a block. But still the fact that the saint lived on for centuries in the hearts of ordinary people speaks much of her sanctity. And that sentiment is well captured by the author of this book. For the Catholic in North America this book may not offer much new about the saint. But for others it is really an excellent introduction to St. Kateri.
May 27, 2017
I stumbled upon this book in a Washington, DC, shrine gift shop while researching wedding venues with my daughter three or four years ago and was delighted to learn that Kateri Tekakwitha had at long last been declared a saint by the Catholic Church in 2012.
This biography was interesting but I must confess that waves of cynicism washed over me every 10 pages or so. Kateri was 18 when she was baptized and 24 when she died in 1680 so she didn't have to ward off worldly temptations for as long as most of us. The author makes much of Kateri's mysticism and self-inflicted penances while downplaying the accomplishments of her friend, Marie Theresa, who came to Christ down a much more troubled path. Yet I am glad I finally read this book since it reminded me to turn to prayer as a first rather than last resort.
(My interest in Kateri began in 1958 when I was cast to play her in a first grade production of "Ten Little Indians". My Lutheran grandmother, a professional seamstress, spent that year in a TB sanitorium so the task of devising a costume for my stage debut fell to my Irish Catholic grandmother who rose to the challenge admirably. Whew! She was almost as worried as I. A few years later she took me to see a small shrine for Kateri when we visited Cross in the Woods National Shrine in Indian River, Michigan, and sent me a postcard the following summer when she and my grandfather visited another Tekakwitha shrine in Canada. Because Grandma passed away when I was only 12 and because I had to share her with 18 other grandchildren, the bond we forged over Kateri Tekakwitha distinguished our relationship and figures largely in my memories.)
This biography was interesting but I must confess that waves of cynicism washed over me every 10 pages or so. Kateri was 18 when she was baptized and 24 when she died in 1680 so she didn't have to ward off worldly temptations for as long as most of us. The author makes much of Kateri's mysticism and self-inflicted penances while downplaying the accomplishments of her friend, Marie Theresa, who came to Christ down a much more troubled path. Yet I am glad I finally read this book since it reminded me to turn to prayer as a first rather than last resort.
(My interest in Kateri began in 1958 when I was cast to play her in a first grade production of "Ten Little Indians". My Lutheran grandmother, a professional seamstress, spent that year in a TB sanitorium so the task of devising a costume for my stage debut fell to my Irish Catholic grandmother who rose to the challenge admirably. Whew! She was almost as worried as I. A few years later she took me to see a small shrine for Kateri when we visited Cross in the Woods National Shrine in Indian River, Michigan, and sent me a postcard the following summer when she and my grandfather visited another Tekakwitha shrine in Canada. Because Grandma passed away when I was only 12 and because I had to share her with 18 other grandchildren, the bond we forged over Kateri Tekakwitha distinguished our relationship and figures largely in my memories.)
May 25, 2014
When I was a little boy, I would often visit my grandparents who lived along the banks of the St. Lawrence River in Lachine, Canada. Not too far down but on the exact opposite side of the river was Kahnawake, now present day Caughnawaga, the place where some of St. Kateri Tekakwitha’s relics are stored. Often, especially during summer vacations, my family and I would visit-in a tourist capacity-the Native Americans of that area, specifically the Mohawk tribe who had, as I recall, a visitor’s center and taught the visitors about their traditions and ways of life, from the times past up to the present. I always marveled at their oral traditions, being wowed into a kind of awe concerning their spiritual storytelling ability. One case in particular was of a holy woman named Kateri who had just recently been beatified by now Pope St. John Paul the II. While I was not Catholic nor even baptized at the time, the significance of her story was rather over my little boy’s head, for I was more interested in the storytelling, assorted dances and Native American dress than I was in anything else. Yet, whenever I would go out for walk with my dad or some family member along the St. Lawrence, I always knew that there was a holy woman, whose name I could not pronounce, whose presence was not too far from the homestead of my grandparents, and I always felt an inexplicable sense of security in knowing that.
The setup of the book is really twofold, the first part being an in-depth history into the early development of Canada or rather “New France” as well as a history of the Native American settlers who inhabited the wild terrain. Before the life of Saint Kateri is even addressed, which comes much later in the book, the reader will get a very detailed and thorough education of what the Native American culture and traditions were like even before St. Kateri was born. Community, storytelling, hunting and marriage were definite elements that brought continuity into that nomadic life, but there was also an adopted system of governance called the Great Council that ran throughout the assorted tribes. While Kateri was of the Mohawk Nation, the Mohawk were not at all the only Native American factions who inhabited the wilds, for there were as well the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga and the Seneca tribes as well. All these tribes were identified by the terrain they either inhabited or by a particular skill that they were adept at. They could, at times, be brutally savage when they needed to be and fiercely militant in their defiance with respects to codes, for each group had their own value and belief system in what they adhered to, but when those systems clashed against their own Native American brethren, there had to be a coalescence based on some common ground that each tribe had, and for most, that was the belief of the Great Spirit, the holder of all that was mysterious and sacred. It was through that universal belief that a fusion of the tribes slowly began to happen, and while they were all individualistic the great bond that all tied them together was the belief in the holy.
Once the background concerning time, history, place and inhabitants is firmly established, the story then moves onto the influence of the French Catholic missionary priests or the Black Robes (as they were so frequently referred to). It was upon their arrival and with their missionary zeal to save souls that the remarkable transformation of the Native Americans slowly began to happen. Often faced with suspicion and savagery, the Black Robes were persistent in their evangelization efforts, planting the seeds of faith in sometimes what appeared to be absolute insurmountable odds. Yet, with diligence and perseverance, the Black Robes were able to communicate through gestures and drawings on tree bark the theology and doctrine of the Catholic faith. And not too surprisingly, it stuck to the minds of the curious listeners, primarily because the Native American spirituality paralleled Catholicism in many respects, so it was none too difficult to take the leap into a more intense union with God, who was and is, the Great Spirit. Many of the Native Americans were so edified by this new enlightenment that they immediately tossed aside the former bad habits that were detrimental to their well being. It was this environment into which Kateri Tekakwitha was born, the daughter of a Mohawk chief and a Catholic mother. Growing up, Kateri was shy and retiring while simultaneously being involved in community work and life. But she was more inward than most and more sensitive to things that were not so obvious for the others in her flock. Disfigured at an early age due to a smallpox outbreak, she also lost her immediate family and was then adopted by her uncle who loved her; yet, he also coveted her because of her status as the daughter of a chief. He knew that she would elevate his status within the Native American hierarchy. Kateri, however, was different from the others, always seeking out comfort in the silence of the woods and not eager for the prospect of earthly marriage. She wanted to be married but to someone higher. She wanted to be married to Love. Yet, that idea was not yet established in her village, and her yearning for what many believed was unreachable, made it easy for her to be ostracized and tormented. However, when the Black Robes came into her life, she grew rapidly in holiness, so much so that she left her native village-extremely unheard of at the time-and followed the wilderness priests to their Catholic outposts. The second half of the book also gives a good summary of Kateri after her death and details many of the supernatural miracles and apparitions of her spirit. Especially noteworthy was the miraculous healing of Jacob Finkbonner of necrotizing fasciitis, also known as the flesh-eating disease; it was the miracle required for Kateri’s canonization. What was so unique was the parallel of the recipient of the miracle to Kateri as a person. Both were Native American, both valued the outdoors, both were disfigured by illnesses, both were Catholic. This was a really fascinating and inspiring read and made me have a deeper sensitivinty and appreciative for Native American culture and history while at the same time harkening me back to my own youth when I wiled away my summer days along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. A good companion piece to this work is the documentary In Her Footsteps: The Story of Kateri Tekakwitha by Salt and Light Media.
The setup of the book is really twofold, the first part being an in-depth history into the early development of Canada or rather “New France” as well as a history of the Native American settlers who inhabited the wild terrain. Before the life of Saint Kateri is even addressed, which comes much later in the book, the reader will get a very detailed and thorough education of what the Native American culture and traditions were like even before St. Kateri was born. Community, storytelling, hunting and marriage were definite elements that brought continuity into that nomadic life, but there was also an adopted system of governance called the Great Council that ran throughout the assorted tribes. While Kateri was of the Mohawk Nation, the Mohawk were not at all the only Native American factions who inhabited the wilds, for there were as well the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga and the Seneca tribes as well. All these tribes were identified by the terrain they either inhabited or by a particular skill that they were adept at. They could, at times, be brutally savage when they needed to be and fiercely militant in their defiance with respects to codes, for each group had their own value and belief system in what they adhered to, but when those systems clashed against their own Native American brethren, there had to be a coalescence based on some common ground that each tribe had, and for most, that was the belief of the Great Spirit, the holder of all that was mysterious and sacred. It was through that universal belief that a fusion of the tribes slowly began to happen, and while they were all individualistic the great bond that all tied them together was the belief in the holy.
Once the background concerning time, history, place and inhabitants is firmly established, the story then moves onto the influence of the French Catholic missionary priests or the Black Robes (as they were so frequently referred to). It was upon their arrival and with their missionary zeal to save souls that the remarkable transformation of the Native Americans slowly began to happen. Often faced with suspicion and savagery, the Black Robes were persistent in their evangelization efforts, planting the seeds of faith in sometimes what appeared to be absolute insurmountable odds. Yet, with diligence and perseverance, the Black Robes were able to communicate through gestures and drawings on tree bark the theology and doctrine of the Catholic faith. And not too surprisingly, it stuck to the minds of the curious listeners, primarily because the Native American spirituality paralleled Catholicism in many respects, so it was none too difficult to take the leap into a more intense union with God, who was and is, the Great Spirit. Many of the Native Americans were so edified by this new enlightenment that they immediately tossed aside the former bad habits that were detrimental to their well being. It was this environment into which Kateri Tekakwitha was born, the daughter of a Mohawk chief and a Catholic mother. Growing up, Kateri was shy and retiring while simultaneously being involved in community work and life. But she was more inward than most and more sensitive to things that were not so obvious for the others in her flock. Disfigured at an early age due to a smallpox outbreak, she also lost her immediate family and was then adopted by her uncle who loved her; yet, he also coveted her because of her status as the daughter of a chief. He knew that she would elevate his status within the Native American hierarchy. Kateri, however, was different from the others, always seeking out comfort in the silence of the woods and not eager for the prospect of earthly marriage. She wanted to be married but to someone higher. She wanted to be married to Love. Yet, that idea was not yet established in her village, and her yearning for what many believed was unreachable, made it easy for her to be ostracized and tormented. However, when the Black Robes came into her life, she grew rapidly in holiness, so much so that she left her native village-extremely unheard of at the time-and followed the wilderness priests to their Catholic outposts. The second half of the book also gives a good summary of Kateri after her death and details many of the supernatural miracles and apparitions of her spirit. Especially noteworthy was the miraculous healing of Jacob Finkbonner of necrotizing fasciitis, also known as the flesh-eating disease; it was the miracle required for Kateri’s canonization. What was so unique was the parallel of the recipient of the miracle to Kateri as a person. Both were Native American, both valued the outdoors, both were disfigured by illnesses, both were Catholic. This was a really fascinating and inspiring read and made me have a deeper sensitivinty and appreciative for Native American culture and history while at the same time harkening me back to my own youth when I wiled away my summer days along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. A good companion piece to this work is the documentary In Her Footsteps: The Story of Kateri Tekakwitha by Salt and Light Media.
July 16, 2018
I was very disappointed with this book. It was fine as a generic biography and summary of the context of her life and environment, however it seemed more like a melding of a Wikipedia blurb and a children's prayer card. The substance of the book could probably have been summed up in about two or three chapters and the biography portion in about a paragraph. Unfortunately it became very repetitive with very little detail or interesting insight. There seems to have been virtually no academic rigor put into writing this book and it was also poorly edited.
June 10, 2017
Very intriguing, this saint's life has really inspired me and I am proud to say that she was my choice of a confirmation name.
The story was told well, though the end was a little dragged out, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!
The story was told well, though the end was a little dragged out, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!
May 6, 2018
This is by far one of the best books I’ve read about Kateri. It gives a wonderful account of the history of her people, and gives the reader a true sense of what she was up against.
March 20, 2021
A fascinatingg account on how Kateri lived her life and healed after she died.
March 8, 2016
This is one of my first introductions to Saint Kateri and this book was very informative. The first third of the book tells us about the world she grew up in. While most of us vaguely remember the Iroquois confederacy from school this book does a good job of bringing giving life to a world so different from the one we live in today. The second part of the book is the account of her life. It is clear from the narrative that while she was still alive, everyone around her knew that she was a saint. The final part of the book talks about Kateri's miracles and intercessions and leads up to her canonization in 2012. This book was very informative and very interesting.
October 21, 2014
A more comprehensive look at the life of St. Kateri than I've ever been able to find, and good food for thought. The authors make attempts at being culturally sensitive, but miss the mark through being overly white/European-defensive after any and all apologies or acknowledgement of the injustices done to Saint Kateri's people, but it is at least an attempt to get away from the blatant racism and infantilism that I have often read in accounts of her. Especially appreciated is the chapters that enumerate the aspects of the indigenous religions that would have predisposed Kateri to Christianity, and the indigenous peoples to a rich spiritual life.
January 2, 2016
Very flowery biography of Saint Kateri who was Mohawk. It took a long time for her to be canonized. She was very devout. She was converted by Jesuit missionaries in the 1700's in the new York area. the miracle that allowed her to be canonized occurred in Washington state in 2006. Some things take time.
May 19, 2015
I'm glad I read this book. Every time I read a book about a saint, I have a vision of the saint watching me as I read. That comforts me.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews