The first Native American saint in North America, Kateri Tekakwitha, lived in Caughnawaga (present-day Fonda) from 1666, when she was ten years old, until 1677, when she fled on foot to Kahnawake, a Christian village in Quebec, Canada, to live the remaining three years of her life.

Kateri was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI approved the second miracle needed for Kateri to be named a Roman Catholic saint (the 2006 healing of a boy using relics from Kateri’s grave and prayers for her intercession.) She was canonized as a patron saint of the environment and ecology by Benedict XVI at Saint Peter’s Basilica in 2012.

Her shrine includes a rustic chapel in an 18th-century Dutch barn and displays of artifacts from the only fully excavated Mohawk village of that era. Nearby flows the holy spring in which she was baptized. Many pilgrims claim cures after drawing its crystal clear water and praying through the intercession of Saint Kateri.