The name Gitzaxłaał means literally "people of (an unidentified variety of shrub)."
Their traditional territory includes the watershed of the Ecstall River, a tributary of the Skeena River, including the now abandoned town, Port Essington, B.C.
Since 1834, they have been based at Lax Kw'alaams, when a Hudson's Bay Company fort was established there.
The anthropologist Viola Garfield wrote in 1938 that Niisho'ot at that point was an elderly man who had succeeded his mother's brother Henry Nelson to the title, in accordance with rules of matrilineal succession.
However, he was one of only three members of his house-group (matrilineal family) in Lax Kw'alaams and so had "adopted his daughter's son as his nephew" to ensure his succession.