Kateri Tekakwitha
1656 — 1680 · Feast day: July 14
Orphaned at four by smallpox, which scarred her face and damaged her eyesight, this Mohawk-Algonquin woman converted to Catholicism at nineteen despite her uncle's fierce opposition. Baptized in 1676 and driven from her village by persecution, she fled to the Jesuit mission at Kahnawake, where she took a vow of perpetual virginity and died in 1680 at age twenty-four — the first Native American to be canonized.