Yakataga Kwáan

Yakataga is a Tlingit name meaning "canoe road", after two reefs that form a canoe passage to the village on this coast. The Yakutat Bay country around it was first home to Eyak-speaking people from the Copper River area. Tlingit families moved into the region and were absorbed into the tribe before Europeans arrived. The Tlingit name for Yakutat, Yaakwdáat, means "the place where canoes rest".

In 1795 and 1796 the Shelikhov-Golikov Company built a fur-trade post and penal colony on the Phipps Peninsula of Yakutat Bay, called New Russia. After the Russians cut off the nearby fisheries, a Tlingit war party attacked and burned the post in 1805, during the Russo-Tlingit War of 1802 to 1805. The site was never reoccupied.