Kiowa: A Woman Missionary in Indian Territory

By Isabel Alice Hartley Crawford

Book Overview

Near the close of the nineteenth century, Isabel Crawford went to the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation in Oklahoma and founded the Saddle Mountain Baptist Mission. This book, written in journal form, begins with her arrival at the reservation in 1896 and describes her decade-long crusade to convert the Indians to Christianity. She and her assistant were the only white women at the isolated station in the Wichita Mountains.

Crawford's experience there tested her resourcefulness, endurance, and sometimes her faith. Humor marks her journal as she recounts her struggles to establish a formal mission. She lived with the Indians, at first putting up in a tipi and adjusting, not without difficulty, to their ways. She was "the Jesus woman" who taught the Ten Commandments. In her wake came camp meetings, baptisms, and "big eats." Through the years Isabel Crawford and her Indian brothers and sisters were bound more closely as they raised money to build a church. Though written with Christian purpose, Kiowa: A Woman Missionary in Indian Territory shows Crawford's sensitivity to Kiowa history and culture during a period of transition.

The mission still exists and Isabel Crawford is still remembered kindly, according to Clyde Ellis, who introduces this Bison Books edition.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803263872
• ISBN13: 9780803263871
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A valuable book

Isabel Crawford, a Canadian woman, came to southwest Oklahoma and was a missionary to the Kiowas for ten years. This book is a compilation of her journals which she kept faithfully throughout her years with the Kiowas, with entries that include personal reflection and testimonies from the Kiowa people. Crawford brought a unique perspective to life on a Native American reservation at the turn of the century. Crawford showed that most Kiowas respected her and she also had a favorable view of the Kiowas. Most of her entries were written from a Christian's perspective and how she tried to share gospel with the Kiowas and in fact, many became Christians because of her. Crawford also with the help of the Kiowas built a church at Saddle Mountain, Oklahoma. Unlike some missionaries who preached to save the "savages", Crawford truly respected their cultural identity and in fact sought a middle ground, where cultural exchange took place. She told them that becoming a Christian would not change their identities. This book is valuable because it contains speeches, conversations and testimonies given by the Kiowas which can help to increase our understanding of both their culture and the complexity of their relationship with missionaries.

The Missionary Trail

Isabel Crawford came fearlessly among the Kiowa Indians; among the last of the tribes to be confined to reservations. The work of all the missionaries transformed the lives of some of the Kiowa people and gave them a spiritual path that the Kiowa continue to follow. Crawford's recording of the words of these early Kiowa converts have the power to make one laugh and to weep. How poigniant the words of the old Kiowas, the so-called savages.