 A Catawba legend tells of a great battle with the Cherokee atop the mountain that left the rhododendron colored crimson and parts of the mountain treeless.While there is no hard evidence that such a battle ever occurred, numerous Native American settlements have been found around the base of the mountain, and the Cherokee settlement of Old Fields stood near modern-day Elizabethton, Tennessee.Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, botanists paid frequent visits to the area to collect plant specimens.