“A Pious Sort of Cruelty”: St. Kateri Tekakwitha and the Interculturation of Torture

ABSTRACT: St. Kateri Tekakwitha (c. 1656–1680), according to her Jesuit missionaries at Kahnawake near Montréal, rapidly attained Christian perfection through severe self-mortification. Her penances bear a striking resemblance to maltreatment suffered by captives in Native “mourning wars.” Several recent scholars have addressed the possible convergence of the indigenous torture ritual inflicted on war captives and Kateri’s penitential self-torture. However, these scholars have declined to admit that a religious syncretism took place between Native and Christian practice around torture. While addressing their well-founded objections, this article suggests that the evidence of Kateri’s self-mortification is best assessed using the framework of interculturation rather than the more restrictive model of syncretism. A rereading of the evidence shows that Kateri Tekakwitha carried out a genuine interculturation, which the Jesuits tacitly approved, of the Native torture ritual as an expression of Native agency in the construction of the new mission community.