In bringing the message of “the Jesus Road” to the Saddle Mountain Kiowas, Isabel Crawford needed help. The 31-year-old, single missionary with a hearing disability used a “hearing horn” and learned sign language to communicate.
However, her most valued assistance came from the Kiowa people she lived among through an interpreter named Lucius Aitsan. As a young boy of nine years old, Aitsan was at Palo Duro Canyon with his father, Luca Maukeen, in 1874, when the Fourth U.S.
Cavalry launched an attack against a group of Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa tribal members who began to gather there for the winter.
The Cavalry slaughtered at least a 1,000 horses owned by the Indians, torched the villages and destroyed the food supply. Maukeen evaded the troops as he and his son struck out on foot to walk back to Fort Sill, more than 200 miles away. Aitsan’s mother was one of the four women married to Kiowa War Chief Santana, also known as White Bear. They belonged to the Ghost-Dance religion.
At the age of 14, the year Aitsan’s mother died, records show that he entered the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which was a boarding school launched by the United States government in an attempt to achieve cultural assimilation.
A letter Aitsan wrote to his father in June 1881, after two years of living at the boarding school, was published in “The School News.” He told his father that he had learned the English language and that he wanted to walk in the good ways.
“I am christian boy. I will try to pray God every day. I pray God to help me. I love God,” he wrote.
“I will try speak English always to.
I am fond of talk English.”
Carlisle records show that Aitsan lived at the boarding school for three years and left in 1882 at the age of 17.
His future wife, Mabel Doanmoe, was also a member of the Kiowa Nation and attended school at Carlisle during the same time period as Aitsan.
When Crawford arrived at Saddle Mountain in 1896, she worked alongside the people in the community in all their daily chores and activities, in addition to teaching, preaching and nursing duties when medical attention was needed. Her day-to-day ministry included cooking, cleaning and teaching both women and men to sew and mend quilts and clothing.
During these sewing times, she was able to share the Bible and teach spiritual lessons.
Missionary society formed In May 1898, Crawford called an all-day meeting. During the morning, everyone sewed and then took a break to eat.
At two o’clock they were called together for a “strong talk” on what the Bible says about giving. Afterwards, the group decided to form a missionary society.
“After talking about a name for it, Lucius Aitsan said, ‘Because we are Kiowa Indians and live near Saddle Mountain, and God has kindled a light here, and a lot of us have found the Jesus road, we want other tribes to find it, and we want to be like a light on the mountain, so we think the best name for this society will be God’s Light on the Mountain.’” Their mission was two-fold, which included the goal of building their own church and providing money to “send a Jesus woman” to other tribes.
Money was raised by sewing and selling quilts to other Indian groups when they gathered and from personal donations from their own Kiowa community.
Funds were split into two barrels, signifying the two goals.
Aitsan became an important bridge in the conflict between the Kiowa Ghost-Dance chiefs and the Kiowa Christians, who embraced the gospel message.
After one contentious meeting where the group was told that “the Jesus road religion is for the white people and the ghostdance religion for the Indians,” Aitsan followed with a very passionate message.
“I just told them this. White Buffalo has given you one big lie for the Jesus road religion is not just for the white people.
I read Jesus’ own words in His book, with my own two eyes, and he says the Jesus road religion is for everybody, nations all over the whole earth, and if you don’t believe Him you will be losted. This is what I know and what I told them.”
On Easter Sunday in 1903, Saddle Mountain Indian Baptist Church dedicated their new building and a congregation was organized the following August. It had been seven years since Crawford had arrived from the Elk Creek mission and gave her first “Jesus Talk” on Easter Sunday in 1896. Rev.
Lucius Aitsan became the first Kiowa Indian Pastor of the church.
A crucial factor in the success of their mission was the relationship between Aitsan and his wife and Crawford.
The Kiowa people considered her one of their own; however, due to a doctrinal dispute with the denominational mission board, she was forced to leave the community in 1904.
The heartbroken missionary declared, before she left her Saddle Mountain community, that she “would sooner lie hidden among the tall weeds of the unkept Indian cemetery … than in any other burial ground in the whole world.”
Isabel Crawford died on Nov. 18, 1961, in New York.
Her Kiowa family buried her body in their cemetery near the graves of her converts. Her epitaph reads, “I Dwell Among Mine Own People.”
Continued from the Feb. 10 edition of Southwest Ledger.
Sources include: “The School News,” Carlisle Barracks, Pa., June 1881, Vol. 2, No. 1, carlisleindian.dickinson.edu; “Baptist Watchman,” Thursday, April 27, 1893, pg 5; “Baptist Watchman,” Thursday, Nov. 23, 1893, pg. 2;“From Tent to Chapel at Saddle Mountain,” by Isabel Crawford, edited by Mary G. Burdette, The Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society, Chicago, © 1903;“Sunlight Mission,” Word and Way, Kansas City, Mo., April 14, 1904;“Kiowa: A Woman Missionary in Indian Territory,” by Isabel Crawford with Introduction by Clyde Ellis, Bison Books Edition, University of Nebraska Press, © 1998, Reprinted from the original 1915 edition; “Kiowa: The History of a Blanket Indian Mission,” by Isabel Crawford, Fleming H. Revell Company, © 1915;“Saddle Mountain Mission and Church,”by Hugh D. Corwin. His sources for the Chronicles of Oklahoma article published in 1958 include letters from Isabel Crawford, her personal diary and a scrapbook of clippings kept by her during 10 years as a missionary at Saddle Mountain; Oklahoma Historical Society, okhistory.org; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guipago; “Their Ancestors Survived the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon,” by Christopher Collins, texasmonthly.com, Oct. 8, 2024; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Crawford, accessed Feb. 9, 2026.