AMERICAN CATHOLICISM WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AMERICAN AND CATHOLIC?
A brief look into the past of European Colonialism and the ethnocide and of millions of Indigenous communities.
who was
LILY OF THE MOHAWKS
FROM DREAMS AND BEADS TO THE CRUCIFIX & JESUS PROFILE
KATERI TEKAKWITHA
Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in what is now Fonda, New York to the chief of the Iroquois Mohawk Native American tribe. Her mother was a native woman from a Canadian tribe that was captured in battle and brought back to the Mohawks where Kater’s father fell in love with her. Her mother had been known for embracing the thought that Catholicism offered ideas that she would like to explore, but was married to an Iroquois chief who was extremely anti-Catholic. The priests of the Iroquois tribes, such as Father Isaac Jogues, are widely known as martyrs who were heavily tortured and murdered by an Iroquois tribe earlier in the same century. To be Iroquois and intentionally embrace the Catholic faith was usually cause for expulsion or harsh treatment from the community in which one was part of. For Kateri’s mother, she is said to have silently embraced the faith even though she lacked baptism, a place to practice, or a priest to confide in. At the young age of four, a new neighboring settlement of Europeans exposed the Mohawk people to a dead-
-ly wave of smallpox. Within mere days of each other, Kateri lost her father and her mother. A source from the tribe says that her mother was severely saddened by the fact that she didn’t have the opportunity to convert her children to Catholicism and baptize them before herself and they fatally fell to the disease. Not long after her mother’s death, Kateri’s older brother died as well, leaving her with no immediate family and only a toddler. She survived the smallpox, but it crippled her sight and left her with severe internal issues for the rest of her worldly life. Adopted by her paternal uncle, Kateri still claimed the position as ‘daughter of chief ’ during his service as such. She was a quiet and reserved child who stayed indoors as much as possible due to the damage done to her eyes; She was incredibly sensitive to light and many times would go outdoors with a blanket over her head to shield her eyes. Many of her fellow tribespeople described her as disinterested in ceremonial, spiritual, and social ways of the natives and was more interested in embracing the ways of dress of non-tribal girls her age. During her young teenage years, four priests came into the village and kept camp with Kateri and her uncle in the same building which is said to have been another unstoppable
force that would eventually lead to her conversion. The Jesuit Fathers, Pierron, Fremin and Bruyas operated within the Mohawk and other surrounding Iroquois villages. In 1676, Kateri had to flee persecution from her home village after she had openly converted to Catholicism after receiving months of religious knowledge and baptism in the Catholic faith. Her uncle was known for being just as anti-Catholic as her father and her home village was not receptive to her new spiritual status. Kateri was stoned, harassed and threatened with harsh punishment before she fled northwest two hundred miles to the Native Catholic settlement of Saint Franรงois Xavier du Sault near Montreal, Quebec at the St. Louis mission. The remainder of her life was spent here until she died from the after-effects of smallpox. Many onlookers say that not fifteen minutes after she died did all of her scars from smallpox completely vanish. Pope John Paul II decided in 1980 that Tekakwitha would begin the beatification process despite no miracles having been reported yet. She became the first person on the path to sainthood that had been exempted of the requirement. In 2011, Pope Benedict recognized her as a saint after a young child claimed his fatal disease was cured after praying to Tekakwitha and she was canonized in October the same year.
"You have come to rejoice in the beatification of Kateri Tekakwitha. It is a time to pause to give thanks to God for the unique culture and rich human tradition which you have inherited, and for the greatest gift anyone can receive, the gift of faith. Indeed, Blessed Kateri stands before us as a symbol of the best of the heritage that is yours as North American Indians." Pope John Paul II
THE FIRST AMERIC TERRITORIAL
When hearing the term, “American Catholics,” many may assume America means the United States of America, shoved in between Canada, Mexico and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Leslie Woodcock Tentler, a white Catholic woman convert who wrote American Catholics: A History (2020), visualizes America within these national boundaries along with racial, ethnic and cultural boundaries. Tentler describes American Catholicism as something that is white and secluded only to the territory that has become the United States, excluding stories of indigenous peoples, non-white immigrants, and the rest of America – South and Mesoamerica, Mexico and Canada. American Catholicism is much more than just the white, European colonizers and immigrants that began to make up one country in a region rich with ethnic, racial, cultural and social diversity.
The first true American Catholics were not the colonizers sailing across hundreds of thousands of nautical miles to a land they would come to claim as their own, but rather the Indigenous peoples they claimed to have rule over in those lands. The first Catholic missionaries were Spaniard Franciscans which is significant due to the majority of the American Catholic population being Hispanic and Latinx or of that descent. While it is true Indigenous peoples were only the beginning of Catholic colonialism and conversion in the Western Hemisphere, Tentler’s assessment of what being Catholic in America means inspired me to focus on the same geographic regions as she, but change the scope and point of view of the narrative. In what is now the United States, “true” Americans are not the white but instead Native and Indigenous communities that have been forgotten and much more due to colonization and these same communities were the first American Catholics. Colonialism must be re-interpreted in order to get a truthful and clear representation of what it means to be Indigenous and Catholic in the American landscape. Unlike what children are taught in Elementary School – Natives and European settlers being good friends who hang out with each other and invite each other
over for massive feasts and laugh and break bread together just as a modern-family does on Thanksgiving – settler colonialism did not actually operate this way. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz states in her An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States introduction, “To learn and know this history is both a necessity and a responsibility to the ancestors and descendants of all parties,” (Dunbar-Ortiz 1).
"Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of America - from California...to the Gulf Stream waters - are interred the bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American Indians. They cry out for their stories to be heard through their descendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded and how it came to be as it is today."
An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States introduction -Dunbar-Ortiz Settler colonialism is a colonialism is that perpetuates not only genocide, but also ethnocide – the erasure of a culture in order to replace it with another. When settler colonialism operates in the name of the introduction of a new religion, ethnocide is a direct effect that is almost always present. Many spiritual traditions are polytheistic with only a few being monotheistic and Christianity is one of them. Native American traditions are more often than not rooted in nature and polytheistic. The celebration and interactions with these deities are oftentimes also physical and include some sort of ritual ceremony objects – Catholicism not being much different in this factor, but being monotheistic and resting much of its spiritual connection on the shoulders of a single savior figure, Jesus Christ. Christianity is a religio-spiritual tradition that evolved in contradiction with Judaism once accepting Yeshua (Jesus) as the savior said to come forth. Judaism is not
CAN CATHOLICS: UNITED STATES a tradition that particularly proselytizes or missionizes, but Christianity does and makes missionizing one of the most key ‘requirements.’ From this comes colonialism disguised as missionizing and the two became something of an inevitable force when one of them is used. With spiritual tradition, cultures usually have a strong tie to it and vice-versa. When conversion occurs, parts of that culture inevitably change in order to interact with the other. Imagine this occurring to an estimated eighteen million people only in North America. Many of those people refused to convert to a tradition they were unfamiliar to. After seven centuries, that number has fallen to only about six million people after numerous genocides, relocations, and a lasting occupation that first started with Catholic missionaries. In the present, there are still numerous Indigenous communities in the United States that operate within the Catholic tradition. University of California Santa Cruz professor Yve Chavez says, “Some [Indigenous people] admonish the Catholic Church due to this history of mistreatment, while others try to balance their Catholic faith knowing their ancestors were forced to live in the missions,” and that “[they] were sometimes doing what they had to do to survive.” It is important to listen to the stories told by these Indigenous communities due to the Catholic narrative disregarding or barely acknowledging its active participation in genocide in the name of faith. If one were only to listen to Catholic narratives, stories such as the one told in Ellen H. Walworth’s The Life
and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks
would completely discredit the harsh reality of being indigenous during and after European settler colonialism in the United States and rest of the Americas. In narratives such as this, Indigenous peoples are spoken of using disrespectful, discriminatory and hateful language while Walworth only describes Tekakwitha in a positive light. She writes sentences such as, “She was far removed from the corruption of the savages – she
was sweet, patient, chaste, and innocent,” (Walworth 42) and “at times the Iroquois were like incarnate devils,” (Walworth 31).
"When it is meal-time they get fire very quickly by rubbing pieces of wood together ; and they cook and devour their fish and venison without the preliminary cleaning and preparing considered necessary among civilized folks. When they feel pain they say, " Ugh ! the devil bites," and when they wish to compliment their own nation they say, " Really the Mohawks are very cunning devils." They make no offerings to their good genius or national god, Tharonya- wagon ; but they worship the demon Otkon or Aireskoi, praying in this way,' "Forgive us for not eating our enemies ! " and in hot weather, " I thank thee, Devil, I thank thee, Oomke, for the cool breeze." They laugh at the Dutch prayers, the dominie tells us, and also at the sermon." Ellen h. Walworth Telling Indigenous Catholic stories from the point of view of thinkers such as Walworth and Tenter is extremely dangerous as it does not use Indigenous voices, but rather the subjective voices of missionaries, white Catholics and biased onlookers. When these topics are discussed, one must learn of both sides in order to understand the full picture. There is no winner or loser in the full narrative, but there is innocence in places one would not think to look. American Catholicism was built on the backs of Indigenous peoples who underwent genocide and ethnocide for centuries on end but are not recognized. Both Tentler and Walworth describe the Iroquois Native tribes in present-day New York and the severe hostility the missionaries faced from them, but neither give the point of view of the Iroquois or why they were so reluctant and against indigenous conversions to the foreign religion. Instead they are called “hostile,” or “savage,” and made into violent beings that “worship the demon,” (Walworth 47).
It makes more than enough sense as to why –some, not all – American Indigenous communities are against Catholicisms and speak out against it such as in California with the erection of Father Junipero Serra, one of the most ‘successful’ missionaries in the Americas who established over twenty missions the California coast. The Catholic Church calls these “successful missions” and claim Serra to be an amazing man, a Saint at that. Yet, when Indigenous people speak up about the cruelties and genocide created by Serra’s arrival, the Church dismisses it and publically reprimands those communities that are threatened by Serra’s multiple statues that line the coast of the Golden State. Ears open, eyes wide and attention unwavering is necessary for communication about Catholic settler colonialism and the mass violence that it evoked in the creation of what has now become the United States of America. American Catholics are not the men in blackrobes that sailed on wooden ships to the Western Hemisphere, but rather those tens of millions of Indigenous people they met upon arrival. SOURCES FOR ARTICLE Cossen, William S. “Authentication Required.” College of Charleston Libraries Off-Campus Access, 20 Jan. 2019, go-gale-com.nuncio.cofc.edu/ps/i.do?p=STND. Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. “This Land.” An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Beacon Press Boston, 2015, pp. 1–14. “Life Story: Kateri Tekakwitha.” Women & the American Story, 16 Nov. 2020, wams.nyhistory.org/early-encounters/french-colonies/kateri-tekakwitha/. Mettler, Katie. Native American’s Long and Complicated Relationship with the Catholic Church. 23 Sept. 2020, www.nzherald.co.nz/ world/native-americans-long-and-complicated-relationship-with-the-catholic-church/NRVWWJZXPBUOJVNP6KJIJWIXVQ/. Molina, Alejandra. “We Have a Story to Tell: Indigenous Scholars, Activists Speak up amid Toppling of Serra Statues.” Religion News Service, 9 July 2020, religionnews.com/2020/07/07/we-have-a-story-to-tell-indigenous-scholars-activists-speak-up-amid-topplingof-serra-statues/. Paul II, John. “To Representatives of the North American Indians of Canada and the United States (June 24, 1980): John Paul II.” To Representatives of the North American Indians of Canada and the United States (June 24, 1980) | John Paul II, 1980, www.vatican.va/ content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1980/june/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19800624_pellerossa.html. “St. Kateri Tekakwitha.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Kateri-Tekakwitha. “VIDEO: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha: Mohawk Mystic of North America.” Edmonton Eparchy, 18 Sept. 2020, eeparchy.com/2015/05/22/ video-saint-kateri-tekakwitha-mohawk-mystic-of-north-america/.
Walworth, Ellen H. The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks. Buffalo: Peter and Paul Brother, 1893.
EDITOR'S STATEMENT
n o s a m o h T h Josia
Hi, some may know me as the extremely outspoken fashionista or the person who takes too many photographs of people, but I promise I am more than that! For all of my life I have appreciated and had an eye and love for anything artistic - hence the many things I busy myself with. Growing up first playing soccer and baseball, I moved on from them (regretably sometimes) in order to pursure theatre, both musical and not. Sometime during my highschool years I was gifted a digital camera and quickly began taking up photography which has shaped my life more than sweet tea in the South. I continue to this day to act as a professional photographer for commercial purposes, personal wants and jobs that I have worked over the years. When I started at College of Charleston in Fall of 2018, I immediately became involved in an A Capella group in which I am now co-music director and dance chair for. During my sophomore year - right before COVID-19 struck the world and changed life as we knew it - I became involved with CofC’s student-run Cistern Yard Media as a photographer and stylist for the CY Fashion Magazine. The next fall (currently), I wrote my first stories for CY News website and magazine and had the opportunity to design the layout of my own article. Learning how to use new software and make the final product look cohesive and good is a very hard feat and it was extremely hard - and the design was pretty boring - for me. So when tasked with this creative assignment, I quickly decided I would create my own magazine. In doing this, I have been able to explore this software more and begin to perfect it and understand how I, as a creative, work. It was no hard choice for me in deciding what the topic of this magazines and its contents would be. My maternal great, great-grandmother was a woman of the Cherokee Native Tribe all of her life, yet no one else in my family recognizes that much nor is it really talked about. We have one photograph of her in my Nana’s
home in her Cherokee beads, braids, and few feathers. So when thinking of all of the people Leslie Woodcock Tentler excluded (or didn’t represent well) in her book, I knew that I wanted to focus in on Native Americans and their lives as the first Anerican Catholics. Native and Indigenous Americans are constantly forgotten and under and mis-represented in American political, social, economic and cultural life. These communities were the first in the lands we now call the United States and were the first victims of settler colonialism in this hemisphere. Seven centuries later and their voices are still barely heard. In stead, they are covered up with stars and stripes on a flag and a cross in the yard. Under the earth we walk on now are millions of murdered and lost communities that were targeted in the name of religion and “freedom.” It is no surprise I did not like the way Tentler described Indigenous Americans in her book, but I was shocked more by the blatant hatred introduced by Ellen H. Walworth in her telling of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha’s life. Now let it be known, I was not raised and did not convert to Catholicism. I am a Jewish person by heritage and was raised Baptist Christian in South Carolina with a mixed race of Black and Italian. I recognize the issues that come with missionizing and do not at all agree with them. Missionizing in modern day is religion disguised as colonialism. And it was the same back in the fifteenth century as well. I chose a magazine to tell these stories and bring more light to the subject because in the United States, things such as this are not taught in K-12 school and much of it has to be pursued in college or univerisity because it’s not required along with other things – some of these requirements are useless, but correct and full history is not one of them. Magazines are something that are (can be) accessible to anyone. Inside of this magazine contains information and sources to information that can educate people without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend higher education and be taught it in a classroom. This was created for all to read and I hope many more decide to explore its contents and sources it draws from. Education should be free and indigenous and minority voices should be heard.
"We are here to educate, not forgive. We are here to enlighten, not accuse." - Willie Johns from Seminole Reservation, Florida
EDITOR/CREATOR Josiah Thomason Puccio photography by Iriana Rucker