While very young, Crowfeather dreamed of carrying on the work of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Mohawk nun, in working to establish a Native Christian sisterhood. She went to the Benedictine Sisters' School in North Dakota for 4 years, and was able to study to become a Sister with an Iroquois Catholic priest who shared her vision of fulfilling the work of The Lily of the Mohawk - Kateri. With 5 other Sioux women, she attended the Benedictine academy in Minnesota, and went on to take her vows in 1890.
Her first assignment at a mission school in South Dakota did not go well due to internal disharmony within the noviate, and her group of Sisters was transferred to a new convent on the Ft. Berthold Reservation. This community of Sisters followed the Benedictine disciplines and became known as The Congregation of American Sisters. The year after establishing this group, Crowfeather was elected founding prioress-general and was given the title of "Mother". She was now known as Mother Mary Catherine, and with her group, worked among the Arickara, Gros Ventre and Mandan teaching English, caring for the sick and carrying on their missionary work.
Crowfeather died of tuberculosis at the age of 26, in 1893. The community she had founded survived for an additional 7 years after her death, and did grow to a total of 12 members. The determination to pave the way for an order of Native Sisters in the face of continuing poverty, illness and racism on every front has served as an inspiration through the years to all those who share this calling.
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