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[Garrison Armory]

I have a river flowing through my map, about 4 across where I'm looking to dam it. My map never freezes and I don't have much magma left to pump it up. I read on the wiki that natural stone will stop water flow. I built a floor section over the river supported by two supports and dumped a bunch of stone up there and I rigged the supports to a level and pulled it. I had a 3x6 floor section with stones set in the middle 4, originally I just had a 1x4 strip till I realized my dwarves were throwing the rocks over the edge, and I let the do this to see if that dumping method would be enough. Eventually I loaded up the top as well and pulled the lever but it scattered the rocks I had previously dumped with the ones from the platform. Did I just not use enough or should I have tried more rocks.

tl;dr how do I damn a river without pumps or freezing?

[Sphalerite]

Objects (including loose stones) don't block water flow, no matter how many of them you sump.  Nor do collapsed constructed floors or walls.  You would need to have a natural wall of stone over the river and cave that in to block that.  I'm guessing you don't, as that appears to be near-nonexistent situation in DF2010.  Cast obsidian would work too, but if you had magma pumped near the river you could just pump magma directly into the river to block it.

Your only other option would be to pump water out of the river long enough to build constructed walls across the riverbed.  You'd need pumps for that, and a large and consistent enough source of power for them.

[Garrison Armory]

Drat, by natural I though stones that wern't deconstructed would count, bah! Looks like its pump time.

[gtmattz]

There is another option...  The method involves digging out a diversion channel off the edge of the map underneath your river, then collapsing some constructed floors through the floor of your river, thus allowing the water to go down and then off the map via some fortifications with a raising bridge or some floodgates to block it off when you are done with it.   While the river is diverted you can get your dwarves in there to build a dam, then once it is built you pull the lever to raise the bridge letting your river fill back up.

[Zwaryczuk]

Pump method works fine! What I like to do is set up waterwheels on both sides of the stream and attach them to 4 pump stacks on both sides (total 8 ). Dig channels on the sides of the pump stacks away from the steam. Have this channel work its way down to a stone layer. Finally have this pumped water go down to an edge of the map tile that has carved fortifications.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/7487/drainriverbyzwaryczuk.jpg

Make sense?

[Passive Fist]

There is another option...  The method involves digging out a diversion channel off the edge of the map underneath your river, then collapsing some constructed floors through the floor of your river, thus allowing the water to go down and then off the map via some fortifications with a raising bridge or some floodgates to block it off when you are done with it.   While the river is diverted you can get your dwarves in there to build a dam, then once it is built you pull the lever to raise the bridge letting your river fill back up.

How do you dig the edge of the map? I can't dig out the last square on any side.

[Garrison Armory]

You don't dig out the last square, dig the trench to a layer with rock on the edge, smooth the rock then carve a fortification. It has a hole that lets water through.