Saint Tekakwitha Plaque and Statue

Disease marks Kateri Tekakwitha's story as it does the Adai's. Smallpox killed her Mohawk father, her Algonquin mother and her brother when she was about four, leaving her with facial scars and poor eyesight. She was born about 1656 at Ossernenon, in present-day New York. Jesuit Jacques de Lamberville baptized her on Easter, 18 April 1676, and she died at Kahnawake near Montreal in 1680. Canonized in 2012, she is the first Native American saint and a patron of ecology and of people in exile.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 5.1 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.
• Natchitoches Historic District — 12 mi
  The riverfront blocks of the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, founded in 1714 at a Natchitoches village, with a brick-paved Front Street, Cane River frontage and the largest bousillage construction in the South.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.
• Fort Jesup State Historic Site — 14 mi
  The 1822 army post Zachary Taylor built to hold the Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Spanish Texas, with the one surviving kitchen, a reconstructed officers' quarters and a museum open Friday to Sunday.

More markers nearby

• Church of St. Anne (Mother Church of Caddo Adai Indians) — steps away
• The Presidio Nuestra Senora del Pilar de los Adais — 5.4 mi
• Los Adaes — 5.9 mi
• Site of Camp Salubrity — 11 mi