Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, in present-day New York, she contracted smallpox in an epidemic; her family died and her face was scarred.

She was the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Kahenta, an Algonquin woman, who had been captured in a raid and then adopted and assimilated into the tribe.

"[9] Tekakwitha grew up in a period of upheaval, as the Mohawk interacted with French and Dutch colonists, who were competing in the lucrative fur trade.

[10] After the defeat by the French forces, the Mohawk accepted a peace treaty that required them to tolerate Jesuit missionaries in their villages.

Tekakwitha, at that point around 13 years old, joined other girls to help priest Jean Pierron tend to the wounded, bury the dead, and carry food and water.

In the spring of 1674, at age eighteen, Tekakwitha met the Jesuit priest Jacques de Lamberville, who was visiting the village.

Lamberville also stated that Tekakwitha did everything she could to practice her Catholic faith in a non-Catholic society, which often caused minor conflicts with her longhouse residents.

Tekakwitha fled her home and travelled 200 miles to St. Francis Xavier, a Christian Indian mission in Sault Saint-Louis.

[11]The Church considers that her 1679 decision on the Feast of the Annunciation completed Tekakwitha's conversion, and the Jesuits described her in early biographies as the "first Iroquois virgin".

[6] Cholenec, who had arrived first, introduced traditional items of Catholic mortification, that is, physical deprivation or self-harm, to the converts at Kahnawake.

When people knew she had but a few hours left, villagers gathered together, accompanied by the priests Chauchetière and Cholenec, the latter providing the last rites.

Cholenec later wrote, "This face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately.

Tekakwitha purportedly appeared to three individuals in the weeks after her death; her mentor Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, her friend Marie-Therèse Tegaiaguenta, and Chauchetière.

Anastasia said that, while crying over the death of her spiritual daughter, she looked up to see Tekakwitha "kneeling at the foot" of her mattress, "holding a wooden cross that shone like the sun."

Marie-Thérèse reported that she was awakened at night by a knocking on her wall, and a voice asked if she were awake, adding, "I've come to say good-bye; I'm on my way to heaven."

Chauchetière meanwhile said he saw Tekakwitha at her grave; he said she appeared in "baroque splendor; for two hours he gazed upon her" and "her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy.

Religious images of Tekakwitha are often decorated with a lily and cross, with feathers or turtle as cultural accessories alluding to her Native American birth.

They asked for the veneration of Tekakwitha in tandem with the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and René Goupil, two Catholic missionaries who had been slain by the Mohawk in Osernnenon a few decades before Kateri's birth.

[33] Her spiritual writings were approved by theologians on July 8, 1936, and her cause was formally opened on 19 May 1939, granting her the title of Servant of God.

[35] In 2006, a young boy from Whatcom County in Washington state, Jake Finkbonner, was lying near death due to flesh-eating bacteria.

[37][38] In 2022, the Episcopal Church of the United States gave final approval to a feast dedicated to Tekakwitha on 17 April on the liturgical calendar.

[40] There are numerous statues of Tekakwitha, among them are: Joseph Kellogg was a Protestant child captured by Natives in the eighteenth century and eventually returned to his home.

As the boy is half Lummi Indian, the parents said they prayed to Tekakwitha for divine intercession, as did their family and friends, and an extended network contacted through their son's classmates.

[54] Sister Kateri Mitchell visited the boy's bedside and placed a relic of Tekakwitha, a bone fragment, against his body and prayed together with his parents.

[57] Boucher said to understand the complexities of Takakwitha’s life, it’s important for people to look beyond the biographies written by clergymen who focus on what they consider her Christian virtues.

Mohawk writer Doug George-Kanentiio further noted the concern that Tekakwitha's sainthood may be used as way to influence Iroquois away from their Indigenous ancestral values, stating:[Tekakwitha's sainthood] should never obscure the best elements of our aboriginal spirituality, nor should Kateri’s personal behaviors, given their extremities [i.e., self-mutilation with whips, thorns, and hot coals], be endorsed as a model for women anywhere.

[57] Some Catholics of Native American and of European ancestries feel her sainthood reflects her unique position as someone who can bridge the two cultures and create unity.

[57] Paula E. Holmes interviewed several elderly Native American women in the late 1990s and found that Tekakwitha is "as part of their Indian familiar and familial heritage.

[7] The historian K. I. Koppedrayer has suggested that the Catholic Church fathers' hagiography of Tekakwitha reflected "trials and rewards of the European presence in the New World.

"[11] American composer Nellie von Gerichten Smith (1871–1952) created an opera entitled Lily of the Mohawks: Kateri Tekakwitha (text by Edward C. La More).