Everyday we drive down the same road to our home and from our home.
Everyday for two years the road we would drive down would pass a field with a little statue to Bl. Kateri and say "One of these days we are going to stop and see what that is all about."
Well, about a month and a half ago we finally stopped.I was ashamed of myself when I read the history of that very field.
The place where Kateri lived for much of here life, Caughnawaga, near the village of Fonda, New York has been marked since 1938 by the Fonda Memorial of Catherine Tekakwitha. The Indian village site was discovered in 1950, a Holy Year, by Father Thomas Grassman, a Conventual Franciscan Friar and founder of the shrine. In that year, Father Thomas unearthed the postmolds where the stockade around the Indian Settlement at Fonda had been, and between then and 1957, with the help of numerous volunteers excavated the rest of the site. Today it is the only completely excavated Iroquois Indian village in the country.
Visitors to the village, which sits on a hill above the Mohawk-Caughnawaga museum and the shrine chapel, can see clearly the outlines of the twelve longhouses and stockade which existed there 300 years ago.
(I will have top stop the car and take some pictures to share in the near future.)
The very next weekend when we attended Mass in Auriesville, it was Kateri's Feast Day. I decided this was a "sign" to take up the cause to have Bl.Kateri canonized.
If anyone else has any special prayers to Bl. Kateri or devotion, I would love to hear about it.
Very interesting ... I have read the stories of her and this kind of American history is very fascinating, especially when the sites are near home.
I always loved the name ... I figured if I had another daughter I might just name her Kateri ... but do you know how to correctly pronounce this? I always pronounced it like this:
ka-TERRY (note the accents)
but I met someone once with this name and they pronounce it:
kat-TARE-ee with the accent almost on the last two syllables and with each syllable pronunced slowly and clearly (I should be attcahing a WAV file cause I can't replicate the sound of it with phonetics)
Anyway, I like the latter version better and never knew what was right but probably some Auriesville-type like yourself knows the straight story.
A lot of natives in Canada, especially Eastern Canada have a devotion to Bl. Kateri. We actually live not from from Kahnawaké and I keep thinking (similarly to you :) ) that I should go there some day and visit the site of the mission where Kateri spent the last three years of her life. Haven't been yet...
Interesting tidbit: nothing to do with Kateri really, but there is another native girl, in Lejac, British Columbia this time, (relatively unknown except in central BC) who might also someday become a saint. She was found recently to be an incorruptible. Rose Prince of the carrier people (Now known as the Rose of the Carriers.) There is an annual pilgrimmage to the site where she is buried.
"In 1951 it was decided to relocate a few graves that were west of the Lejac Indian Residential School to another larger cemetery nearby. During the transfer the casket of a young woman named Rose Prince broke open. She had been buried two years earlier. The workers were amazed to find both Rose's body and clothing perfectly preserved. Other bodies were examined. All of them, some buried after Rose, were found to be decaying. When witnesses were called, including some Sisters, they found her body in perfect condition. She seemed transparent and looked as if she were sleeping. There was "just a tiny little smile on her face". A bouquet of withered flowers was on her chest."
More here: http://www.pgdiocese.bc.ca/roseprince/
here are some links:
a book for $3 - http://www.tekakwitha.org/Tekakwitha/Treasuresx.html
a prayer (scroll down) - http://www.wf-f.org/BlKateriTekakwitha.html
lots of stuff (scroll down, use drop-down menu to select pages) - http://www.catholictradition.org/kateri.htm
I always stop at road side monuments like that; as you figured out, sometimes you dont know what you're missing until you take a moment to stop and look around!
It's not nearly on the same level as your "find", but if you're ever in Charlotte, I can show you where Andrew Jackson was standing when he heard Lincoln had been killed, where Bill Monroe recorded his first albums, and where Randolph Scott is buried.....Yours is still cooler though.
I have a need, a great desire to go to where Ven. Solanus Casey is buried some day.
Auriesville gives me goose-bumps. I have felt the presence of others while walking the grounds.
Kateri has always been a favorite in our family. My sister tried, without success to take her name for Confirmation- no such luck- she wasn't even Blessed then- You are lucky to live so close-
Oh -! I don't know if it's the same field where they excavated the villlage's longhouses where Kateri used to live, but do stop - and also take some time to check out the Fonda shrine to her. The church, St Peter's, inside will take your breath away, I promise. You walk in and immediately freeze - it's like being inside a longhouse - and is very beautiful and holy. Our family goes there once a year or so, and we love it. The gift shop is also great - tons of inexpensive momentoes available.