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

Chapter 2

Before Catherine Tekakwitha had come to the Mission of Saint Francis Xavier of the Sault, where the Iroquois professed the Christian religion for twenty-five or thirty years, Our Lord had seemed to prepare the place for this virtuous girl. He began as of 1667, when He had inspired Father Pierre Rafeix to go to the already established settlement of La Prairie de la Madeleine. He made there a sort of a Parish for the French and a Mission for the Natives. Then Father Rafeix had worked to do a resting place for those, who came down from the above Missions. And when peace was made, some of the Natives came from the side of Montreal to hunt and these hunters gave rise to the foundation of the Mission. They would pass the winter there with the French and three to four cabins were built for the Natives. The Missionaries left the land of La Prairie to settle for some land a league and one quarter higher, because they planted only corn that made the land no longer fertile enough to support them. The Missionaries settled on a land granted to the Jesuits, which was the Sault Saint Louis or the Sault Saint Francis Xavier from the name of the Mission. God had taken seven years to cultivate this new Church, where we saw as many Christians as fervent as those of the primitive Church.

It was at the Mission that God wanted to have delivered me from a great interior affliction, which I had for a year. God gave me the grace to have placed my foot in this holy Mission in 1677, but the great grace God had done to me was the relation that I have with Catherine Tekakwitha. After three or four months of my arrival, He had allowed Tekakwitha to come here from the land of the Mohawks, where she was born.

The mother of Tekakwitha was a good Christian Algonquin, who the Iroquois had taken at Three Rivers and during the wars against the Hurons and Algonquins. Fortunately, this poor captured Algonquin was to be married to an Iroquois. And from this marriage was born Tekakwitha, which was a marriage between a Christian woman and heathen. Her mother, who her baptismal name I do not know, had also a son. She had lived with her husband and children at Gandaouague. It was a small village of the Turtle clan in the Mohawks, who were one of the five nations of the Iroquois.

Smallpox had ravaged this village and caused the death of many children and adults. This had obliged perhaps the Natives to make peace with the French. The mother of Tekakwitha had died and left the two children with the only regret of leaving them without being baptized. It was said that she was a fervent Christian and she prayed until her death, which her prayers perhaps obtained the grace of Baptism for her daughter and us the grace of possessing a Saint. The other child had died and only Tekakwitha remained. It was thought that she too would die at the age of four years old, because she had been afflicted with smallpox. This through the course of time had obtained for her the blessing of virginity. Her face was before unmarked and now had become ruined with scars left from the smallpox. She had almost lost her eyesight, because her eyes were so hurt from this illness that she could not endure the strong light. This had obliged her to remain covered in her blanket and favoured the desire to remain not known. She often thanked Our Lord for this grace and saying this incommodity was a grace, because if she had been good looking that she would have been more sought from the young people and done like the other girls, who they had abandoned to sin.

She had never done anything that might offend God, because from the age of six or seven years old that she began to have a certain natural modesty, which is the guardian of chastity. The good nature of her and the care her mother took of this little one when she lived went to make her grow in age and wisdom. She considered herself a great sinner during her life, because it seemed as if she had a stain on her body and was very careful to hide it.