Isabel Alice Hartley Crawford (May 26, 1865 – November 18, 1961) was a Baptist missionary who worked with the Kiowa people in the Oklahoma Territory.
Crawford, who had lost most of her hearing due to an illness, communicated with the Kiowa using Plains Indian sign language.
[1] John Crawford was raised a Presbyterian in County Londonderry, Ireland, but converted to the Baptist church as a teenager.
After her parents moved back to Canada, Isabel attended a two-year course at the Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago, graduating in 1893.
[3] Because she was nearly deaf, Crawford had to communicate with the Kiowa through an interpreter, by lip reading, or using a hearing device that hung around her neck.
[3] To win the trust of the Kiowa people, she shared chores with them, cleaning, baking bread, gathering firewood, caring for the sick.
[5] The new church had no pastor, but they wanted to celebrate the Eucharist, so Crawford told them to elect one of their own to perform the service, and they chose Lucius Aitsan.
[8] The WBHMS had supported Crawford through the doctrinal dispute, and she continued to work for them, traveling around the country and speaking at churches and other gatherings.
Crawford back-translated the prayer into English, and it was published as a pamphlet:[10] The Great Father above a shepherd Chief is the same as, and I am His, and with Him I want not.
It is dark there, but I will pull back not, and I will be afraid not, for it is in there between those mountains that the Great Shepherd Chief will meet me, and the hunger I have felt in my heart all through this life will be satisfied.
Before she left Saddle Mountain, Crawford declared that she "would sooner lie hidden among the tall weeds of the unkept Indian cemetery .
When she died on November 18, 1961, the Kiowa buried her in the Saddle Mountain Indian Baptist Church Cemetery near the graves of her first converts.