He was editor of the first printing press in the Indian Territory (which became the state of Kansas), issuing the Shawnee Sun as the first tribal language publication.

[4] At age 16, he left his family for one year to apprentice with a doctor in Vincennes, Indiana, where he met Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy.

[3][6] In 1829, in preparation for major removal westward, Lykins traveled to study medicine for one year at the prestigious Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.

[3] The Indian Removal Act of 1830, of which Lykins and McCoy had originally been good faith advocates, pushed many of the mission's constituents westward.

[6] Other groups' later forceful removals of tribes in 1838 along a similar route are historically commemorated as the Potawatomi Trail of Death.

Books in Shawnee, Potawatomi, and other native languages were rapidly produced, to be used in missionary educational programs such as literacy.

[4] In 1851, he married a second time, to Martha "Mattie" A. Livingston, a teacher of his daughter Sarah, at a boarding school in Lexington, Missouri.

In the 1880s, Mattie wrote a memoir recalling life in the town of Kansas, through the sacking of Lawrence and the Civil War.

[1][9] From 1856 to 1857, Mattie oversaw construction of the Lykins mansion, the city's first[3] and reportedly the "handsomest residence west of St.

[7] Because the Southern traditional design was "so pretentious that no one in Missouri would attempt to erect the structure", they hired architects and craftsmen from Cincinnati and shipped steel beams from Pittsburgh.

[3] While most citizens saw wooden sidewalks and muddy streets roamed by livestock,[4] this Greek classic revival, or neoclassical, style two-story brick mansion with red painted walls had 14 rooms, 10 fireplaces, circular staircases, and crystal chandeliers.

The house was frequented by Kansas City leader Kersey Coates and his young daughter, "presided over by a host and hostess of the old regime of Southern hospitality [which] afforded a degree of enchantment of which the most exaggerate fairy tale certainly has no prototype".

[11] During the American Civil War, he maintained Union loyalty but Mattie had to move to Clay County, Missouri, due to General Order No.

[2][4] His namesake Lykins Neighborhood is in the Historic Northeast district of Kansas City, directly east of his first mansion.

The Lykins Neighborhood Association (LNA) became an exemplar of rehabilitation from historic blight caused by racist housing policies set by JC Nichols in the early to mid 1950s.

[17] His bibliography of publications include the languages of Kansa, Delaware, Potawatomi, Munsee, Otoe, Osage, Iowa, Piankehsaw, and Shawnee.

Long after his lifetime, the Pottawatomie Baptist Mission Building was restored and repurposed, and finally became a museum for the Kansas Historical Society next to its headquarters.