Kahnawake

American Indian reserve just south of Montréal, southern Québec, Canada, on the Lac St Louis (the St Lawrence River); population (1981) 5,200. A shrine contains the tomb and relics of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first American Indian beatified by the Roman Catholic Church (1980), who lived here from 1677 to 1680.

The reserve was founded in the 1660s as a refuge for Christian Iroquois in La Prairie and relocated here shortly afterwards. In the 1880s jobs building a nearby railway bridge introduced residents to high steel construction work, in which they became world famous.