Oconee Tribe – Significance unknown.
Oconee Connections. The Oconee belonged to the Muskhogean linguistic stock, and the Atcik-hata group. (See Apalachicola)
Oconee Location. Just below the Rock Landing on Oconee River, Georgia. (see also Florida.)
Oconee History. Early documents reveal at least two bodies of Indians bearing the name Oconee and probably related. One was on or near the coast of Georgia and seems later to have moved into the Apalachee country and to have become fused with the Apalachee tribe before the end of the seventeenth century. The other was at the point above indicated, on Oconee River. About 1685 they were on Chattahoochee River, whence they moved to the Rock Landing. A more northerly location for at least part of the tribe may be indicated in the name of a Cherokee town, though that may have been derived from a Cherokee word as Mooney supposed. About 1716 they moved to the east bank of the Chattahoochee in Stewart County, Georgia, and a few years later part went to the Alachua Plains, in the present Alachua County, Florida, where they became the nucleus of the Seminole Nation and furnished the chief to that people until the end of the Seminole war. Most of them were then taken to Oklahoma, but they had already lost their identity.
Oconee Population. The following estimates of effective Oconee men in the Creek Nation are preserved: 1738, 50; 1750, 30; 1760, 50; 1761, 50. In 1675 there were about 200 Indians at the Apalachee Mission of San Francisco de Oconi.
Connection in which they have become noted. The name Oconee is perpetuated in the Oconee River, the town of Oconee, Oconee Mills, and Oconee Siding, all in Georgia, but not necessarily in the name of Oconee County, South Carolina, which is of Cherokee origin, although there may be some more remote relationship. There is a place of the name in Shelby County, Illinois.
