St. Kateri Tekakwitha Coloring Page

The story of St. Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri was born in 1656 in a Mohawk village in what is now New York State. Her father was a Mohawk chief, and her mother was an Algonquin woman who was a Christian.

When Kateri was about four, a terrible sickness called smallpox came to her village. Her mother, her father and her little brother all died. Kateri lived, but the sickness left marks on her face and made her eyes weak, so bright sunlight hurt them. Her aunt and uncle raised her. She was good at beadwork and helped with the work of the longhouse.

When Kateri was still a girl, priests called Jesuits came to visit her village and talked about Jesus. Kateri listened carefully. Years later she asked to be baptized, and on Easter Sunday in 1676, when she was twenty, she was baptized and took the name Kateri, the Mohawk way of saying Catherine.

Some people in her village made fun of her for being a Christian. So in 1677 she traveled north, by river and canoe, to a Christian village near Montreal. There she made her First Communion on Christmas Day. She spent long hours praying in the little chapel and alone in the woods, and she cared for the sick and the old. She promised to belong only to Jesus.

Kateri died when she was only twenty-four. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI declared her St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint.

What to color

• The wooden cross: brown. Kateri loved Jesus on the cross more than anything.
• The lilies: white with green stems. She is called the Lily of the Mohawks.
• The turtle: green and brown. It is the sign of her Turtle Clan.
• Her blanket: dark blue or gray, drawn over her head the way the oldest pictures show her.
• Her deerskin clothes: tan and light brown, with beadwork in red, blue, yellow and white.
• The river, canoe and church: blue water, a birchbark canoe and a little wooden church, for her journey to the mission.

A prayer to pray together

We ask Kateri to pray for us in simple words:

St. Kateri Tekakwitha, pray for us.

Children can add a prayer for their family, for Native peoples, and for God's creation, since Kateri is a patron of ecology.

Ideas for families and classrooms

• Color this page for her feast day, July 14 in the United States (April 17 in Canada).
• Go on a nature walk and thank God for the trees, rivers and animals Kateri loved.
• Make a simple cross from two sticks tied with string, like the small wooden cross Kateri holds.
• Talk about it: Kateri was teased for loving Jesus. How can we be kind to someone who is being teased?
• Learn about other American saints.