Lakhimpur figures largely in the annals of Assam as the region where tribes from the east first reached the Brahmaputra. The most prominent of them was the Chutiya rulers who held the areas of the present district for long, until the outbreak of the Ahom-Chutiya conflict in the 16th century and eventually the area came under the rule of the Ahom dynasty.The Ahoms created a new position called "Bhatialia Gohain" to control the region. The area was later given by Ahoms to the Baro-Bhuyans to rule like feudal lords, as they had helped defeat the Chutiya and Kachari kingdoms. There was a Chutia principality formed by the king Lakshminarayan in the start of the 15th century upon which the district has been named. The copperplate inscription of a land grant given by the Chutia king in the year 1403 A.D. in the west of the Subansiri river (Swarnadi) as well as the ruins between Dhal and Ghagar rivers (near present-day North Lakhimpur town) shows the evidence of the settlement. The Burmese, who had ruined the native kingdoms, at the end of the 18th century, was in 1826 expelled by the British under the Treaty of Yandabo. They placed the southern part of the state, together with Sivasagar under the rule of Raja Purandhar Singh; but it was not till 1838 that the whole was taken under direct British Administration.