Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits

1. On the broader context in which this instance of colonial hagiography is situated, see Allan Greer, “Colonial Saints: Gender, Race, and Hagiography in New France,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 57 (April 2000): 323–48; as well as the articles assembled in Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500–1800, ed. Allan Greer and Jodi Bilinkoff (New York: Routledge, 2003).

2. I only hope that any sense of identification with Chauchetière works to reinforce, rather than distract from, the original goal of examining the native experience of colonization. I draw comfort from Jill Lepore’s observation that microhistorians frequently tend to identify with an investigator figure in their attempts to retrieve the experience and outlook of the historically inarticulate. Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” Journal of American History 88 (June 2001): 129–44.

3. The prime example of this ethnohistorical approach is Bruce G. Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1976).

4. The negative view of the Jesuits of New France is prevalent in the current literature in the field. In addition to Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, see James P. Ronda, “The Sillery Experiment: A Jesuit-Indian Village in New France, 1637–1663,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 3 (1979): 1–18; Denys Delâge, Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeast North America, 1600–64 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1993); Karen Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Women in Seventeenth-Century New France (London: Routledge, 1991); Carole Blackburn, Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions in North America, 1632–1650 (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2000). For a different view, see James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

5. For bibliographical information, see Carlos Sommervogel et al., Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 12 vols. (Paris and Louvain, 1890–1960), passim; Edward-Xavier Evans, “The Literature Relative to Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks, 1656–

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