George Gibbs was born on July 17, 1815, in Astoria, Queens, New York.

He was an ethnologist, naturalist, geologist, and expert on the language and culture of the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. A graduate of Harvard University Law School (1838), Gibbs moved west during the gold rush of 1848 and eventually secured the position of Collector of the Port of Astoria, Oregon Territory. From 1853 to 1855, he was a geologist and ethnologist on the Pacific Railroad Survey of the 47th and 49th parallels under the command of Isaac Stevens. In 1857, Gibbs joined the Northwest Boundary Survey and served as geologist, naturalist, and interpreter until 1862. The last decade of his life was spent in Washington, D.C., where he undertook studies of Indian languages under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. After the Civil War, he served on a commission settling claims of the Hudson's Bay Company against the U.S.

In 1839, he married Esther Tyler (1819–1882). He died on April 9, 1873, in New Haven, Connecticut.