Ottawanta, Our Lady of the Field(s), and the Persistence of Legend in American Catholicism

Since the nineteenth century, a legend has been passed down regarding an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a Native American at what is now Emmitsburg, Maryland. This legend, while often repeated, has never received critical attention. This article provides a transcription of the legend's earliest surviving manuscript along with critical analysis and a history of the legend's subsequent transmission. While the story presents itself as an historical account, further analysis reveals it to be a fictional work that discloses more about the legend's transmitters and readers than about an event in early American Catholicism. Generations of American Catholics have repeated the story, indicating the persistence of a medieval approach to legend in which the veracity of an account is less relevant than the supernatural insight it communicates.