Father Chauchetière said, “The mother of Tekakwitha was a good Christian Algonquin, who the Iroquois had taken at Three Rivers (Trois-Rivières) and during the wars with the Hurons and Algonquins. Fortunately, this poor captured Algonquin was to be married to an Iroquois.”
Father Cholenec said, “Her mother was of the Algonquin Nation, which had been baptized and raised among the French at Three Rivers. It was there that the Iroquois had taken her, which was from the war with the French and brought as a slave to their country. She lived among them and soon after was married to one of the Chiefs of the village.”
Catherine Tekakwitha’s mother was most probably taken during the summer of 1653 in Three Rivers to Gandaouague. She had known of Father Jacques Buteux, S.J., and of the Mission of Notre-Dame de la Conception in Three Rivers. He had founded the Mission in 1634 with Father Paul Le Jeune, S.J., who returned to France in 1649. Father Jacques Buteux was perhaps the Father that had baptized her mother.
In 1653, the village of Three Rivers was attacked during the entire summer by the Anniehronnon (Mohawks) Iroquois. Although, as of the end of April 1651, that the Iroquois began attacking the Huron Country and along the Saint-Laurent River. On Friday May 10, 1652, Father Jacques Buteux was killed by a band of fourteen Iroquois on the Saint Maurice River, north of Three Rivers.
Then, on Saturday August 30, 1653, “We are daily awaiting the result of a Council or general assembly, that the Iroquois are holding in their own country on the proposal of peace. They themselves made to us after a thousand acts of hostility and a thousand attempts to take our village of Three Rivers. They were faithful in the truce of forty days which they granted us, for during that time nothing at all was seen of them and we went our way on both land and water, without any hostile encounter.”
On Thursday November 6, 1653, the Iroquois made their presents in the cause of peace, which were responded with other presents.
And about her father, which we read in Pierre Cholenec’s life of Catherine Tekakwitha, “We do not know of the destiny of her father.” It was written that she (her mother) lived with her husband and children at Gandaouague. Also, he was one of the Chiefs of the village. The assumption is her father died from smallpox as her mother and brother, because smallpox is contagious and the family was living together in their longhouse.
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