Oconee

Oconee was a Hitchiti-speaking tribal town of the Southeastern Woodlands, its people kin to the Muskogee and sharing in the Mississippian heritage of the Ocute chiefdom. Spanish records first name it among the Apalachicola Province communities along the lower Chattahoochee River.

Between 1690 and 1692 Oconee moved with the other province towns to Georgia, settling on the river that bears its name, but in 1715, at the opening of the Yamasee War, the whole cluster returned to the Chattahoochee. There the town divided.

Around 1750 Ahaya, called Cowkeeper by the British, led a faction into Florida and built Alachua and Cuscowilla, the largest Seminole settlement when William Bartram visited in 1774. Ahaya's band became the Alachua Seminoles, the first Florida group to break openly with the Muscogee Confederacy. Those who remained on the Chattahoochee stayed among the Lower Towns and shared the Creek fate.