The Great Miami River: More Than 'Just A River'
Rivers are more than just bodies of water. They are infused into local histories, and carry stories of human triumph and heartache along their course. On this page you will learn brief key historical points about the Great Miami River, including indigeious history, european settler history, the Miami-Erie canal, and the Great Flood of 1913.
Learn more about present-day water quality, aquatic life, and recreation opportunities
Jump to: Shawnee Tribe | Myaamia Tribe | Early Settler | Miami-Erie Canal | Great Flood of 1913
Indigenous History
In learning about the Great Miami River and its watershed, it is important to recognize the tribes that were the original stewards and inhabitants of these lands. While Ohio has a rich and long indigenous history dating back thousands of years, the most recent tribes to inhabit these lands, before forced removal, were the Shawnee and Myaamia Tribes.
Adena & Hopewell Cultures
More than 2,500 years ago, a series of Native American civilizations arose in southern Ohio known as the Adena and Hopewell cultures. These communities built massive earthen burial mounds and, later, monumental earthen enclosures. Situated on the bluffs overlooking the Great Miami River south of Dayton, the Miamisburg Mound is one of the largest of its type in North America. The earthwork complexes are believed to have been ceremonial centers for many small settlements where activities focused on gathering wild plants, hunting, and gardening. No one knows for sure what led to the end of earthwork construction. A leading theory is that successful adaptation and growth of larger villages, such as the preserved Sunwatch Village (c. A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1400) near Dayton, created new societies where the geometric earthwork ceremonial centers were no longer needed.
Miamisburg Mound
Shawnee Tribe
The Shawnee Tribe is an Algonquian-speaking people, who originally occupied lands in southern Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Their name comes from the Algonquian word “shawum” meaning “southerner,” and refers to their original location in the Ohio Valley south of the other Great Lakes Algonquian Tribes.
With noted ancestry from the Lenape (Delaware) tribe, the Shawnee were commonly known to migrate around Ohio at will. In the mid-1600s, the Shawnee also had to travel due to pressure from the Iroquois and American settlers. With other Ohio Valley tribes in parts of the southern region also under stress from the Iroquois Confederacy and European-American colonization, Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa tried to unite eastern tribes under a movement called the Pan-Indian Unity in the early 1800s. The alliance allowed the tribes to band together to fight against colonization until it was dissipated by Americans shortly after Tecumseh was defeated in the Battle of Thames in 1813. This forced the Shawnee tribe to relocate to Oklahoma (Walton, 2020).
Today, the Shawnee are found in three federally recognized communities in Oklahoma: the Absentee Shawnee, the Eastern Shawnee, and the Shawnee tribe.
Myaamia Tribe
The Myaamia Tribe migrated from Wisconsin and into western Ohio in the early 1700s, having already established villages in Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana. In 1730, the first English traders are known to have been trading gunpowder, hatchets, rum, blankets, and beads with the Myaamia for their valuable furs. Their principal village in Ohio was Pickawillany – near present-day Piqua – but their strongholds were dotted throughout the Maumee and Great Miami River valley.
Today, the Myaamia are federally recognized as the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.
Early Settler History
The French were the first Europeans to explore the area, marking their claim with a lead tablet at the river's mouth in 1749. Following the American Revolution, veterans were granted land in the Northwest Territory, leading to a surge in settlement along the Great Miami River. After the Greenville Treaty of 1795, European settler presence along the river exploded as the Shawnee and other Indigenous tribes were forcibly removed from the area, allowing the European settlers to gain footing and expand their presence. From that point onward, the river became a highway of commerce, especially with the building of the canal system. In time, major cities grew up amid the farms along the Great Miami, and colonial forts were replaced by industries, including steel plants, distilleries, and paper mills.
Miami-Erie Canal
The M & E Canal was 274 miles long, connecting Cincinnati to Toledo - the Ohio River to Lake Erie. Construction began in 1825 at a cost of $8 million (equivalent to $177 million today). At its peak, the canal had 103 locks and featured feeder canals, man-made reservoirs, and guard stations.
As railroad systems were introduced and found to be a more reliable and cheaper mode of transporting goods, the Ohio canals saw less and less use. Various attempts at canal revival were made between 1904 and 1910, however, on March 23, 1913, the final blow to the M & E Canal occurred: After a winter of record snowfall, storms dumped an abnormally heavy amount of rain on the state, resulting in the Great Flood of 1913. The flood caused the reservoirs to spill over into the canals, destroying aqueducts, washing out banks, and devastating most of the locks.
After the flood, the Miami Conservancy District built a world-class flood protection system along the Great Miami River to prevent such disastrous flooding from ever happening again. While a great asset, the placement of the flood protection system meant the end of the canal’s use.
Luckily, history lives on. Throughout the Great Miami Riverway, you can find pieces of the original canal and many other places that celebrate its history. Here is a guide to view pieces of the canal today along the river. In Piqua, you can even ride the canal in a canal boat called the General Harrison.
Great Flood of 1913
Flood levels in Dayton reached as high as 20 feet in some areas., flowing up to 25mph.
In March 1913, the citizens of the Miami Valley experienced a natural disaster unparalleled in the region's history. Within a three-day period, nine to 11 inches of rain fell throughout the Great Miami River Watershed. The ground was already saturated from the melting of snow and ice of a hard winter. The ground could absorb little of the rain and it ran off into streams and rivers, causing the Great Miami River and its streams to overflow. Every city along the river was overrun with floodwaters. All together, nearly four trillion gallons of water, an amount equivalent to about thirty days of discharge of water over Niagra Falls, flowed through the Miami Valley during the ensuing flood. Within weeks of the Great Flood of 1913, community leaders hired engineer Arthur Morgan to develop a regional flood protection system that still stands strong today, over 100 years later.
Learn more about 1913 Flood History
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