Andrew Newman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643458
- eISBN:
- 9781469643472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643458.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter uses onomastics, the study of names, to compare the intersecting stories of two women who lived in the Iroquois-Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake. The Iroquoian concept of requickening ...
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This chapter uses onomastics, the study of names, to compare the intersecting stories of two women who lived in the Iroquois-Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake. The Iroquoian concept of requickening may lend insight into how Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint, may have modelled her life after her baptismal namesake, St. Catherine of Siena. The Jesuits’ choice of Marguerite, after St. Margaret of Antioch, as a new baptismal name for John Williams’s captive daughter Eunice may have been intended as an allusion to her rescue from heresy. Her eventual marriage to a Mohawk man fulfilled her Mohawk name, Kanenstenhawi, just as Kateri Tekakwitha’s vow of chastity fulfilled her Christian one.Less
This chapter uses onomastics, the study of names, to compare the intersecting stories of two women who lived in the Iroquois-Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake. The Iroquoian concept of requickening may lend insight into how Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint, may have modelled her life after her baptismal namesake, St. Catherine of Siena. The Jesuits’ choice of Marguerite, after St. Margaret of Antioch, as a new baptismal name for John Williams’s captive daughter Eunice may have been intended as an allusion to her rescue from heresy. Her eventual marriage to a Mohawk man fulfilled her Mohawk name, Kanenstenhawi, just as Kateri Tekakwitha’s vow of chastity fulfilled her Christian one.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631592
- eISBN:
- 9781469631615
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631592.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter explores the cult of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Mohawk maiden whose tremendous spiritual discipline (which included daily self-flagellation with tree branches, hot coals, and thorns) ...
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This chapter explores the cult of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Mohawk maiden whose tremendous spiritual discipline (which included daily self-flagellation with tree branches, hot coals, and thorns) convinced Jesuit missionaries that Indians could be “holy” too. Since dying at age 24 in 1680, she—like Mother Julia in South Texas—hasn’t had a moment’s rest: she’s been causing miracles around the St. Lawrence River Valley (and beyond) ever since. In October 2012, she was canonized a Saint by the Vatican—the first Native American ever to be so. More than a thousand Mohawks flew to Rome to bear witness. In this chapter, the author joins the thousand who descended upon Kahnawake, the Mohawk Nation just south of Montreal, Quebec, where Kateri is buried, instead. There, at the Mission of Saint Francis Xavier, she meets an Algonquin woman who graduated from Indian Residential School and learns about the brutal legacies of Catholicism on Mohawk land.Less
This chapter explores the cult of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Mohawk maiden whose tremendous spiritual discipline (which included daily self-flagellation with tree branches, hot coals, and thorns) convinced Jesuit missionaries that Indians could be “holy” too. Since dying at age 24 in 1680, she—like Mother Julia in South Texas—hasn’t had a moment’s rest: she’s been causing miracles around the St. Lawrence River Valley (and beyond) ever since. In October 2012, she was canonized a Saint by the Vatican—the first Native American ever to be so. More than a thousand Mohawks flew to Rome to bear witness. In this chapter, the author joins the thousand who descended upon Kahnawake, the Mohawk Nation just south of Montreal, Quebec, where Kateri is buried, instead. There, at the Mission of Saint Francis Xavier, she meets an Algonquin woman who graduated from Indian Residential School and learns about the brutal legacies of Catholicism on Mohawk land.
Andrew Newman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643458
- eISBN:
- 9781469643472
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643458.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This book analyzes representations of reading, writing, and recollecting texts – “literacy events” – in early America’s best-known literary genre. Captivity narratives reveal how colonial captives ...
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This book analyzes representations of reading, writing, and recollecting texts – “literacy events” – in early America’s best-known literary genre. Captivity narratives reveal how colonial captives treasured the written word in order to distinguish themselves from their native captors and to affiliate with their distant cultural communities. Their narratives suggest that Indians recognized this value, sometimes with benevolence: repeatedly, they presented colonists with books. In this way and others, scriptures, saintly lives, and even Shakespeare were introduced into the diverse experiences of colonial captivity. Captivity narratives reflect lived allegories, the identification of one’s own unfolding story with the stories of others. Sources include the foundational New England narratives of Mary Rowlandson and John Williams, the French Jesuit accounts of the colonial saints Isaac Jogues and Kateri Tekakwitha, the Anglo-African John Marrant’s account of his sojourn in Cherokee territory, and the narratives of Colonel James Smith and other captives in the Great Lakes region during the late eighteenth century.Less
This book analyzes representations of reading, writing, and recollecting texts – “literacy events” – in early America’s best-known literary genre. Captivity narratives reveal how colonial captives treasured the written word in order to distinguish themselves from their native captors and to affiliate with their distant cultural communities. Their narratives suggest that Indians recognized this value, sometimes with benevolence: repeatedly, they presented colonists with books. In this way and others, scriptures, saintly lives, and even Shakespeare were introduced into the diverse experiences of colonial captivity. Captivity narratives reflect lived allegories, the identification of one’s own unfolding story with the stories of others. Sources include the foundational New England narratives of Mary Rowlandson and John Williams, the French Jesuit accounts of the colonial saints Isaac Jogues and Kateri Tekakwitha, the Anglo-African John Marrant’s account of his sojourn in Cherokee territory, and the narratives of Colonel James Smith and other captives in the Great Lakes region during the late eighteenth century.
