John Pitchlynn

Who is John Pitchlynn?

John Pitchlynn was a Scottish-American who served as the official U.S. Interpreter for relations between the government of the United States and the Choctaw Nation, an office known at the time as the Choctaw Agency. His interactions extended from the time of George Washington through the administration of Andrew Jackson. He built a home on the west bank of the Tombigbee River that became the nucleus of the abortive village of Plymouth, Mississippi. The site is now part of the Plymouth Bluff Environmental Center.

Pitchlynn married Sophia Folsom, a mixed-race Choctaw of partly Anglo-American descent, whose father was Ebenezer Folsom, and mother Natika was Choctaw. Sophia's Choctaw name was Lk-lo-ha-wah. The couple married in 1804.

The Pitchlynns had ten children. The most notable of these was their son Peter Pitchlynn, who later became principal chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma after the removal of the 1831 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.