The history of local self-government in the Yakutsk region is of great interest to researchers, both historians and lawyers. The experience of the functioning of local self-government in pre-revolutionary Yakutia, solving urgent problems of economic activity of the Yakuts, economic relations can be used in the modern society. The purpose of the academic article was to consider the history of the formation of ideas about the traditional management of the Yakuts in the pre-revolutionary historical literature. In the course of work on the article, the works of pre-revolutionary researchers were analyzed, where the traditional management of the Yakuts is considered. It is concluded that since the 18th century, there was a process of accumulating ethnographic knowledge about the Yakuts, including the consideration of the inherited administration. In the 19th century, political exiles made a great contribution to the study of the population and governance of the Yakuts, whose research activities contributed to the accumulation of knowledge about the life and self-government of the Yakuts. In the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the first scholarly works devoted to the history of local self-government in the Yakutsk region began to appear. The pre-revolutionary historical literature became the basis for subsequent studies of the history of the Yakut administration.