The Duwamish traditionally used the river to hunt ducks and geese, fish for salmon, cod, and halibut, harvest clams, and gather berries, camas, and other plants for food and medicinal purposes.

[2] Native villages on the Duwamish were eventually supplanted by white settlements and commercial uses, and there was evidence of deliberate burning of Indian longhouses in 1893.

[3] Duwamish people continued to work and fish in the area, using man-made "Ballast Island" on the Seattle waterfront as a canoe haul-out and informal market, but by the early 20th Century, most remnants of traditional life along the river had disappeared.

[5] The last year-round Duwamish residents on the river – an old man named Seetoowathl, and his wife – died of starvation in their float-house on Kellogg Island in the winter of 1920.

In 1909 the City of Seattle formed the Duwamish Waterway Commission to sell bonds and oversee the re-channelling of the river.

Work began in October 1913, and the oxbows gradually disappeared, with a few recesses in the channel left to accommodate high water flows and turning ships.

[8] The shallow, meandering, nine-mile-long river became a five-mile engineered waterway capable of handling ocean-going vessels.

[9] Due to 20th century industrial contamination, the lower 5 miles (8.0 km) of the Duwamish Waterway was declared a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2001.

Opposition to this plan in both Seattle and Tacoma forced the sludge to be shipped to Klickitat County in south central Washington instead of disposal in Puget Sound.

[10] The Duwamish River faces other types of pollution such as fecal coliform bacteria, caused by combined sewer overflows.

[14] With the spread of ecological concerns in the 1970s, various environmental, tribal, and community organizations became interested in the severely polluted Duwamish River and Waterway.

[17] Canada geese, great blue herons, starlings, cormorants, pigeons, buffleheads, Caspian terns, warblers, hawks, ospreys, bald eagles, and numerous waterfowl call the river home and can be seen feeding in and around its waters.