Gideon Lincecum (22 April 1793 – 28 November 1874) was an

American pioneer American pioneers were European American and African American settlers who migrated westward from the Thirteen Colonies and later United States to settle in and develop areas of North America that had previously been inhabited or used by Nati ...

, historian, physician, philosopher, and naturalist. Lincecum is known for his exploration and settlement of what are now the U.S. states of Alabama, Mississippi and Texas, which was then beyond the western borders of the

Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of Kingdom of Great Britain, British Colony, colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Fo ...

. Lincecum had good relations with Native Americans as he explored the wilderness in the American South. He was son of Hezekiah and Sally (Hickman) Lincecum, and was born in Warren County, Georgia, on April 22, 1793. Lincecum was self-educated. He spent his boyhood principally in the company of Muskogees. After successive moves, he and his wife, the former Sarah Bryan, moved in 1818 with his parents and siblings to the Tombigbee River, above the site of present

Columbus, Mississippi Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Lowndes County, on the eastern border of Mississippi, United States, located primarily east, but also north and northeast of the Tombigbee River, which is also part of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterwa ...

. While living among the

Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...

in Mississippi, he recorded their legends and traditions in the Choctaw language. After moving to Texas, he translated it to English as the ''Chahta Tradition''. He sought a new frontier in 1868 and, at the age of seventy-six, with a widowed daughter and her seven children, joined a Confederate colony in

Tuxpan, Veracruz Tuxpan (or Túxpam, fully Túxpam de Rodríguez Cano) is both a municipality and city located in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The population of the city was 78,523 and of the municipality was 134,394 inhabitants, according to the INEGI census o ...

, Mexico. He died on November 28, 1874 after a long illness at his Long Point, Texas, home.

Historian

Lincecum had contact with Chickasaw,

Creek A creek in North America and elsewhere, such as Australia, is a stream that is usually smaller than a river. In the British Isles it is a small tidal inlet. Creek may also refer to: People * Creek people, also known as Muscogee, Native Americans ...

(Muscogee), and

peoples before the

Indian removal Indian removal was the United States government policy of forced displacement of self-governing tribes of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi Riverspecifically, to a de ...

s of the 1830s began. He learned how to speak and write their languages, learned about their medicine, and recorded their history. Lincecum frequently visited an elderly Choctaw man named ''Chahta Immataha'', who gave him a detailed account of Choctaw oral history.O'Brien, Mississippi Historical Society Historian Patricia Galloway notes that Lincecum's "narrative is not reliable."

Naturalist

Lincecum was a self-taught naturalist. Lincecum would spend "countless hours observing birds, insects, weather, rocks, and plants. He regularly corresponded with like-minded individuals, including

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

on two occasions. He published numerous articles in scholarly scientific journals and came to be recognized as a thorough and respectable researcher, in spite of his lack of formal education."

Works

*�
Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum
��, Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society. 8 (1905), 443-519. *�
Choctaw Traditions about Their Settlement in Mississippi and the Origin of Their Mounds.
��Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society. 8 (1904), 521-542. *“Life of Apushimataha.” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society. 9 (1906), 415-485. *"Pushmataha: A Choctaw Leader and His People." Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2004. *''Science on the Texas Frontier: Observations of Dr. Gideon Lincecum'', Edited by Jerry Bryan Lincecum, Edward Hake Phillips, and Peggy A. Redshaw. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1997. *''Traditional History of the Chahta Nation, Translated from the Chahta'', Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas, 1861.

Notes

References

* * * * * * *Jerry Bryan Lincecum and Edward Hake Phillips, eds. ''Adventures of a Frontier Naturalist: The Life and Times of Dr. Gideon Lincecum'' (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994).

External links