The upper course of the Mira is called the Chota River and is notable for its Afro-Ecuadorian inhabitants, its bomba music, and the large number of internationally prominent soccer players it has produced.

The most distant source of the Mira River may be Puruanta Lake, located at an elevation of 3,473 metres (11,394 ft) in the Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve of northern Ecuador.

Several tributaries unite to form the Chota River north of the town of Pimampiro at an elevation of 1,700 metres (5,600 ft).

A class of traders called mindaeles, exchanged the semi-tropical crops of the valley with the people of the Pais Caraqui chiefdoms of the surrounding higher and cooler elevations.

[5] The Mira in this section and upstream in the Chota Valley is popular for rafting and kayaking as there are many Class III and IV rapids.

In the 17th and 18th century Jesuit missionaries owned most of the land in the Chota valley and imported Africans to work as slaves on their sugar cane plantations.

[9] Slavery was abolished in Ecuador in 1852 and most of the Afro-Ecuadorian residents of the Chota Valley became landless sharecroppers, a condition which continued until the late 20th century.