Oconee Mountain was the first mountain encountered when moving east to west along the Cherokee Trading Path and appeared in European journals as early as the 1700s. In 1761, Captain Christopher French wrote that after marching about five they reached Ocunnih Mountain, which was extremely high and about four miles over, with a very extensive prospect behind them. Multiple treaties, including the Treaty of Dewitt’s Corner in 1777 and Hopewell in 1785, used Oconee’s ridgeline as a boundary between settler and Cherokee lands in South Carolina. At the mountain’s base stood the Cherokee town of the same name, now an active and protected archaeological site. In the summer of 1761, British Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant led an army of 2800 men in an expedition against the Cherokee Nation, and on June 7 his force camped at the abandoned Cherokee village of Ocunnih; among the regiment were Thomas Middleton, Henry Laurens, Andrew Williamson, Isaac Huger, Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter, William Moultrie, and Francis Marion.