Claude Chauchetière, S.J. "The Life of the Good Catherine Tekakwitha, said now Saint Catherine Tekakwitha" (1695)

Chapter 12

A short time before the arrival of Catherine, which when we had wanted to say of a person was a good Christian that we would say the person resembled Ganneaktena, who is buried at La Prairie. The defeat of the nation of the Cats was a blessing for Ganneaktena, an Erie woman of whom we speak, because on becoming an Iroquois that she became a Christian. She was taken as a slave and given to the Oneidas and her life was without reproach. She was never stain with the vices common among the infidels. She was married to a good Huron warrior and his name was Francis Tonsahoten. He kept the promise that he had made at Baptism until his death that is, of refraining from drunkenness. He had always remembered what his wife left as a testament when at her death and this good woman had so touched the soul of her husband, which one had only to remind him of her that his temper would be quieted in a moment.

In Montreal, she had spent the winter of 1667. She often went to the chapel and assisted at the ceremonies at Christmas. Father Rafeix, who began to build a chapel in La Prairie, had invited and taken care to instruct them. Although the following spring he brought them to Quebec, where Father Chaumonot had instructed and baptized them. After she was baptized, she did not seem to want to remain among the French, because her husband was determined to return to their country. She succeeded and obliged her husband to go to La Prairie, but they had lived with Father Rafeix until the beginning of the summer when her husband built their cabin. The place was an advantage for fishing and hunting and also, they cleared the land to sow the corn. This was the beginning of the Mission that would be at the Sault.

Her generosity had made her be loved from everyone and her cabin was the refuge for everyone that was afflicted. They were the two first Christians of the Mission. They had lived in a religious manner and every form of devotion was practiced. The life of prayer and work that she led was an example to the French and the Natives. She was the first that God chose to establish the Holy Family among the Iroquois, which Father Pierron had given her a Rosary of the Holy Family.

While working in the fields in the hot sun that she was seized with a headache, but it caused her joy through the hope that she would soon see her desires fulfilled. She was in continual devotion or saying the Rosary with those, who came to see her during her illness. She had wanted ardently during the first days of her illness to go to Heaven and asked of God only to die in peace with all the Sacraments. When she had received from the Father the Last Sacraments, which she became restless with her fever and after she fell into a continual sleep. She had died on Monday November 6, 1673, which everyone was grieved when she died. They had called her the Mother of the Poor, the Good Christian and the Pillar of the Faith. In 1689, there was a dispute between the Natives of the Sault and the French from La Prairie, because who among them would possess her body and finally the French had taken the body with several entire things found that were preserved.

A year before, the winter of 1688, Francis Tonsanhoten had died as a good Christian at the Sault. When the village was changed, he went to the Sault and he gave his land there to the building of a bark cabin for the chapel and as a testimony of the affection he had of the Faith. He was called the Father of the Faithful, because he was the first Christian Native, who had lived at La Prairie and at the Sault.

After God had taken her, He brought Catherine Tekakwitha, who had a virtue that was to render her incomparable. The name of Catherine was with great veneration among the Natives, but this name became more venerated when this young virgin was sanctified at the Sault.