Tekakwitha Lily of the Mohawk

Mission Dolores Cemetery
16th and Mission
The Mission District

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha  baptised as Catherine Tekakwitha and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680), is a Roman Catholic saint, who was an Algonquin–Mohawk virgin and religious laywoman. Born in Auriesville (now part of New York), she survived smallpox and was orphaned as a child, then baptized as a Roman Catholic and settled for the last years of her life at the Jesuit mission village ofKahnawake, south of Montreal in New France, now Canada.

Tekakwitha professed a vow of virginity until her death at the age of 24. Known for her virtue of chastity and corporal mortification of the flesh, as well as beingshunned by her tribe for her religious conversion to Catholicism, she is the fourth Native American to be venerated in the Roman Catholic Church (after Juan Diego, the Mexican Indian of the Virgin of Guadalupe apparitions, and two other Oaxacan Indians). She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980 and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter’s Basilica on October 21, 2012.

The relationship between the Spanish missionaries and the Native Indians is a controversial and difficult subject. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Mission Dolores had one of the highest death rates of Spain’s 21 missions in California. Thousands of Indians of bay tribes are buried in the vicinity. Nearly all of them died of European diseases, or overwork, or of the destruction of their culture.” Bret Harte’s California reports that the first interment in the mission graveyard took place as early as 1776.  Most of these first Californians were buried beneath wooden markers that have not survived. My feeling is that the Mission decided to put this statue up to placate some of that animosity and serve as a marker for all those un-named.

Father Junipero Serra was nominated for Sainthood and Tekakwitha is a Saint . There is an interesting article about the controversy, and the apparent incongruity to the situation here.

The base reads: In Prayerful Memory of the Faithful Indians.

The artist on this sculpture is unknown, it appears to be cast stone.