Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) is the first Native American to be beatified in the Catholic Church.   When she was four, Tekakwitha lost her family to a smallpox outbreak; the disease scarred Tekakwitha’s face and weakened her eyesight, but she survived.  She was adopted by her aunts and uncle.  Growing up, Tekakwitha always remembered that her mother was a Christian.  Throughout her childhood, Tekakwitha would remember the stories and the faith that her mother shared with her.   When she was twenty, she was baptized and given the name Kateri—the Mohawk word for Catherine.  Tekakwitha’s adopted family did not accept her new way of life; she was taunted and threated so much by her people that she left her village in New York and traveled on foot into Canada by herself.  Her favorite devotion was making crosses out of sticks that she found in the woods.  She was known for retelling the Bible stories to others, and at her death it is said that the scars on her face disappeared and her face was made beautiful by God.  She is also known as Lily of the Mohawks.