Catherine Gandeaktena [On the anniversary of her death Nov. 6]

GANDEACTEUA (Gandeacteüa, Gandeaktena, Gandeaktewa, Gandiaktua, Ganneaktena), Catherine, an Erie belonging to the Cat nation, responsible for the founding of the Saint-François-Xavier mission at Prairie-de-la-Magdelaine (moved in 1717 to Caughnawaga); d. 1673 at the mission.

In the autumn of 1654 the Mohawks completely razed Gentaienton, a Cat village, and before the end of the year they had annihilated this people of Iroquois stock, which had been established on the south shore of Lake Erie. Gandeacteua and her mother were carried off as slaves to the Oneida village of Ganouaroharé. The story is told that she soon won everyone’s heart. Towards 1656 she was married to a Christian Huron, François-Xavier Tonsahoten, who had been adopted by the Iroquois.

In 1667 she met Father Jacques Bruyas*, a Jesuit who had come to carry on his work in her village. She taught him Iroquois and in return he taught her the truths of the faith. Gandeacteua helped him to convert a dying woman. Shortly afterwards her husband took her on a trip to Montreal. She suggested to him that they should continue as far as Quebec. There, at the end of the summer of 1668, Bishop Laval* baptized her, as well as a small group of Oneidas and Mohawks. When the neophytes were back in Montreal, Father Pierre Raffeix*, a Jesuit, received them and invited them to spend the winter with him at Prairie-de-la-Magdelaine. Thus the “newly-baptized people returned in autumn and landed at la prairie, where in the course of time they and many others have built a fine village. . . . At the beginning of the winter, they set out to go hunting.”

In the spring of 1669 Catherine and the other Indian women sowed some corn. The crop was excellent. Three other Iroquois lodges were built that year. Catherine Gandeacteua’s charity and zeal attracted more and more pagans. In 1671, to her great satisfaction, more than 20 Iroquois families belonged to the Saint-François-Xavier mission. The neophytes decided to stay there permanently. In this same year the Jesuit Philippe Pierson, a Belgian, introduced the new converts to the Confrérie de la Sainte-Famille. Catherine had a preponderant influence in it, and even today the Confrérie still exists among the Indians of the mission.

Before the end of 1673 the Great Mohawk [see Togouiroui] brought some 40 of his people to Prairie-de-la-Magdelaine. By this time there were more than 200 Indians there, representing at least 22 nations. Catherine Gandeacteua had practically finished her work. This woman, whose charity, humility, tenacity, and tact were extraordinary, died after a short illness on 6 Nov. 1673. Everyone, French as well as Indians, had such esteem for her that when the cemetery was being moved in 1689, 16 years after her death, they quarrelled as to where her remains would be kept. It was finally decided that they would be kept at the mission. In the opinion of her contemporaries Gandeacteua, the foundress of Caughnawaga, was a true saint.

A Commemoration of Catherine Gandeaktena

Ant: She hath considered a field and bought it; with the fruit of her hands she hath planted a vineyard.

V:She hath opened her hand to the needy

R:and stretched out her hands to the poor.

Let us pray.

O God, we thank Thee for the graces Thou hast bestowed on Thy servant Catherine, whom Thou called from slavery to be the mother of Christians and pillar of faith for the Iroquois. Humbly we pray that, if it be Thy will, her name be soon raised to the dignity of the altars. We ask this through Christ our Lord Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, world without end, Amen.

More on Gandeaktena from Claude Chauchetière, S.J. “The Life of the Good Catherine Tekakwitha, said now Saint Catherine Tekakwitha” (1695). (Note: I cleaned up the translation a bit)

http://www.thelifeofkateritekakwitha.net/en/cc/chapter12.html

Chapter 12

A short time before the arrival of Catherine, when we wanted to say a person was a good Christian, we would say the person resembled Ganneaktena, who is buried at La Prairie. The defeat of the nation of the Cats was a blessing for Ganneaktena, an Erie woman of whom we speak, because on becoming an Iroquois she became a Christian. She was taken as a slave and given to the Oneidas and her life was without reproach. She was never stained with the vices common among the infidels. She was married to a good Huron warrior, and his name was Francis Tonsahoten. He kept the promise that he had made at Baptism until his death, that is, of refraining from drunkenness. He had always remembered what his wife left as a testament when at her death, and this good woman had so touched the soul of her husband, that one had only to remind him of her and his temper would be quieted in a moment.

She had spent the winter of 1667 in Montreal. She often went to the chapel and assisted at the ceremonies at Christmas. Father Rafeix, who began to build a chapel in La Prairie, had invited and taken care to instruct them. Although the following spring he brought them to Quebec, where Father Chaumonot had instructed and baptized them. After she was baptized, she did not seem to want to remain among the French, because her husband was determined to return to their country. She succeeded and obliged her husband to go to La Prairie, but they had lived with Father Rafeix until the beginning of the summer when her husband built their cabin. The place was advantageous for fishing and hunting, and they cleared the land to sow the corn. This was the beginning of the Mission that would be at the Sault.

Her generosity had made her be loved from everyone and her cabin was the refuge for everyone that was afflicted. They were the two first Christians of the Mission. They had lived in a religious manner and every form of devotion was practiced. The life of prayer and work that she led was an example to the French and the Natives. She was the first that God chose to establish the Holy Family among the Iroquois, which Father Pierron had given her a Rosary of the Holy Family.

While working in the fields in the hot sun, she was seized with a headache, but it caused her joy through the hope that she would soon see her desires fulfilled. She was in continual devotion or saying the Rosary with those who came to see her during her illness. She had wanted ardently during the first days of her illness to go to Heaven and asked of God only to die in peace with all the Sacraments. When she had received from the Father the Last Sacraments, she became restless with her fever and after she fell into a continual sleep. She died on Monday November 6, 1673, at which everyone was grieved. They had called her the Mother of the Poor, the Good Christian and the Pillar of the Faith. In 1689, there was a dispute between the Natives of the Sault and the French from La Prairie about who among them would possess her body, and finally the French took the body with several entire things found that were preserved.

A year before, the winter of 1688, Francis Tonsanhoten had died as a good Christian at the Sault. When the village was changed, he went to the Sault and he gave his land there to the building of a bark cabin for the chapel and as a testimony of the affection he had of the Faith. He was called the Father of the Faithful, because he was the first Christian Native, who had lived at La Prairie and at the Sault.

After God had taken her, he brought Catherine Tekakwitha, who had a virtue that was to render her incomparable. The name of Catherine was held with great veneration among the Natives, but this name became more venerated when this young virgin was sanctified at the Sault.

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