Karaga

Karaga belongs to the river and coastal country of eastern Kamchatka, facing the waters beside Karaginsky Island. The river appeared on an early Russian map around 1700, drawing on information associated with Vladimir Atlasov's expedition of 1697. Its Russian name preserved an older Koryak river name interpreted as referring to reindeer.

Stepan Krasheninnikov's eighteenth-century description gives a more detailed picture of settlement. He placed Kytalgyn, known in Russian tribute registers as Karaginsky, on a high hill beside the bay receiving the Karaga. Individual raised dwellings had their own palisades. He also recorded Koryak habitation at two other places along the river. The Karaga headwaters approached the Lesnaya River, and travellers commonly crossed between the two. The locality consequently belonged to a connected landscape of coastal strongholds, river settlements and overland passages, already named and inhabited before Russian surveys entered those places on their maps.