Ottawa is the capital of Canada

With the draining of the Champlain Sea around ten thousand years ago the Ottawa Valley became habitable.[15] The area was used for wild edible harvesting, hunting, fishing, trade, travel, and camps for over 6500 years by local populations. The Ottawa river valley has archaeological sites with arrow heads, pottery, and stone tools. The area has three major rivers that meet, making it an important trade and travel area for thousands of years.[16] The Algonquins called the Ottawa River Kichi Sibi or Kichissippi meaning "Great River" or "Grand River".[17][18][19][20]

Étienne Brûlé, the first European to travel up the Ottawa River, passed by Ottawa in 1610 on his way to the Great Lakes.[18] Three years later, Samuel de Champlain wrote about the waterfalls of the area and about his encounters with the Algonquins, who had been using the Ottawa River for centuries.[21] The early explorers and traders were later followed by many missionaries. The first maps of the area used the word Ottawa to name the river.

Philemon Wright, a New Englander, created the first settlement in the area on 7 March 1800 on the north side of the river, across from Ottawa in Hull.[22][23] He, with five other families and twenty-five labourers,[17] set about to create an agricultural community[24] called Wrightsville. Wright pioneered the Ottawa Valley timber trade (soon to be the area's most significant economic activity) by transporting timber by river from the Ottawa Valley to Quebec City.[25]

Bytown, Ottawa's original name, was founded as a community in 1826 when hundreds of land speculators were attracted to the south side of the river when news spread that British authorities were immediately constructing the northerly end of the Rideau Canal military project at that location.[26][27] The following year, the town would soon be named after British military engineer Colonel John By who was responsible for the entire Rideau Waterway construction project. The military purpose of the canal was to provide a secure route between Montreal and Kingston on Lake Ontario, bypassing the stretch of the St. Lawrence River bordering the state of New York that had left the British forces easily exposed to American enemy fire during the War of 1812.[28] Colonel By set up military barracks on the site of today's Parliament Hill. He also laid out the streets of the town and created two distinct neighbourhoods named "Upper Town" west of the canal and "Lower Town" east of the canal. Similar to its Upper Canada and Lower Canada namesakes, historically 'Upper Town' was predominantly English speaking and Protestant whereas 'Lower Town' was predominantly French, Irish and Catholic.[29] Bytown's population grew to 1,000 as the Rideau Canal was being completed in 1832.[30][31] Bytown encountered some impassioned and violent times in her early pioneer period that included Irish labour unrest that attributed to the Shiners' War from 1835 to 1845[32] and political dissension that was evident from the 1849 Stony Monday Riot.[33] In 1855 Bytown was renamed Ottawa and incorporated as a city.[34]. William Pittman Lett was installed as the first city clerk guiding it through 36 years of development. [35]