N'Quatqua, variously spelled Nequatque, N'quat'qua, is the proper historic name in the St'at'imcets language for the First Nations village of the Stl'atl'imx people of the community of D'Arcy, which is at the upper end of Anderson Lake about 35 miles southeast of Lillooet and about the same distance from Pemberton.
in size and located adjacent to the mouth of the Gates River (see N'Quatqua First Nation for a list of other reserves administered by the band, some of which are also named Nequatque).
First Nations people have resided at N'Quatqua "since time immemorial" and there is little doubt that there has been human habitation at this sheltered, food-rich spot soon after the catastrophic collapse of the Cayoosh Range 8-20,000 BP that created Seton Portage and separated Anderson and Seton Lakes (the catastrophe would have created a huge wave - see megatsunami - wiping out all human populations in the valley).
Prior to the diversion of the Bridge River into the Seton watershed, the salmon runs coming up the lake were as typically large as on other tributaries of the Fraser.
There were other villages in the Gates Valley, southwest from D'Arcy and up Blackwater Creek towards Birkenhead Lake, as well as at Birken but between the ravages of smallpox, an early 19th-century war with the Tsilhqot'in, the effects of the gold rush and Oblate evangelization and the Indian Act, today there is only N'Quatqua.