Gideon Lincecum

Photograph of Gideon Lincecum, 1874.

Gideon Lincecum (22 April 1793 – 28 November 1874) was an American pioneer, 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. Lincecum had good relations with Native Americans as he explored the wilderness in the American Deep South. He was son of Hezekiah and Sally (Hickman) Lincecum, and was born in Warren County, Georgia, on April 22, 1793.^[1] 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.

While living among the Choctaw 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, Mexico. He died on November 28, 1874 after a long illness at his Long Point, Texas, home.^[1]

Historian

Lincecum had contact with Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Choctaw Native Americans before the Indian Removals 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.^[2] Historian Patricia Galloway notes that Lincecum's "narrative is not reliable."^[3]

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 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."^[4]

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.

Bibliography

• Lois Wood Burkhalter, Gideon Lincecum, 1793-1874: A Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965).
• 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).

Citations

See also

Daniel Boone

External links

• Texas History - Gideon Lincecum
• Mississippi Pioneer and Man of Many Talents