B11. The emergence of rivers.
The river (rarely: a chain of lakes, a narrow strait) or its current channel was created by humans or animals. See motives B12, B13. There are other motive options in this section.
South Asia. Uttar Pradesh and all of northern India [The Ganga is the daughter of Himavat, the impersonator of the Himalayas; Jamna is the daughter of the Sun and sister of Yama; Balárama, having drunk, asked her to go swimming; When she didn't come, he grabbed a plow share, dragged it and dragged it with him; she took human form and asked for forgiveness, but he dragged her for a long time]: Crooke 1894:19-20.
Tibet is the Northeast of India. Toto [Pidua (Tishong Moishing) is a spirit of evil, Itpsa's brother and rival (Shainjha) hid the water inside the mountains, and drove the clouds from the sky; people asked I. to get water; I. did not find clouds in the west, north and east; found it in the south, began to beat with a sword, it rained from them, but soon everything dried up again; began to ask the forest and mountains where the water was, but they kept silent; for a month advised me to ask the sun, and the sun pointed to the mountains; I. began to cut mountains, rivers flowed from them, and the forest and mountains deprived him of the ability to speak]: Majumdar 1991, No. 5:210-212.
Volga - Perm. Komi [under the weight of a mammoth, the ground caved, where it passed, rivers appeared]: Rochev 1984, No. 108, 109:114-115.
Western Siberia. The Nenets [Num made the earth smooth; the mammoth spoiled it; where it passes, there is a river, where the lake will lie; then he went underground and took his offspring there]: Tretyakov 1869 (2): 414-416 in Anisimov 1959:19.
Eastern Siberia. Dolgani [the mammoth agreed with the man that he would walk on the ground for three years before going down to the lower world; rivers formed where he passed, lakes where he lay down]: Popov 1937:85; northern Yakuts reindeer herders (Oleneksky Nasleg) [the rivers were trampled by selia (mammoths) created by Allaraa-Ogonyor; they could trample the entire land, but Ayy-Toyon destroyed them or sent them to lower world]: Gurvich 1977:199-200.
Amur-Sakhalin. Nivhi: Kreinovich 1973 [Taign'and came to make rivers on a deer; the deer walked and twisted; the tributaries were the trail of T.'s rod with which he quilted a deer]: 333; Sternberg 1933 [there used to be water, the land and everything was created by kurn; big rivers are the trail of his deer, small ones were formed by waving his whip at the deer]: 320.
Japan. Ainu [the god, the creator of villages, descends from the sky, breaks through riverbeds with his hands and feet; also digs with a hoe from an elm tree; returns to heaven, and the hoe turns into an elm tree; from across the sea God of the Year comes; he is resting at the top of an elm tree (there are no other trees yet); the elm is pregnant; the son was raised by the sister of the waterfall god; ripped off the skin from the elm tree, made clothes for the child]: Nevsky 1972:23.
SV Asia. Chukchi [people live in the dark, eat black stones instead of meat, white stones instead of fat; in the kele world, the sun is hidden, wrapped in skins; the raven comes to play ball with Kele's daughter, persuades her ask his father for the sun to play, flies away with him; a bundle holes, the world is flooded with light, the Kele flees; after kicking branches, the Raven turns them into deer; flying above the ground, drags his wing, doing excavating them and creating rivers and the sea; becomes thunder]: Bogoras 1928, No. 4:304-305.
The Arctic. Northern Alaska Inupiate [water floods the world, a small island remains; the raven harpoons floating bunches of grass, the water is gradually descending; fish in the lakes left over from then; large marine animals crawled to the ocean, laying riverbeds]: Gubser 1965:34-35; Kodiak [Kodiak used to be separated from the continent only by a river; an otter from Kenai Bay climbed and created a strait]: Lisyansky 1812 (2 ): 76-77.
Subarctic. Slevy [a giant hunts beavers in Great Slave Lake; a beaver flees, escaping the waters and creating the McKenzie River]: Ross 1861 in Clark 1971:104.
NW Coast. The Tlingites [a man catches a tiny halibut; his wife throws it away; he fights, grows, splits a single land mass into the Queen Charlotte Archipelago]: Swanton 1909, No. 40:180-181.
The coast is the Plateau. Ne perse [Coyote pierces a spear into a monstrous beaver; he drags it with him, paving the Yakima and Columbia rivers]: Clark 1953:172-175; yakima (paluz) [like ne perse; on a beaver giants hunt; he paves the Palouse River Gorge]: Clark 1953:118-119; Okanagon (spokane) [people scare the monster; it paves the Spokane River from Lake Curdalen]: Durham, Steele & Rose in Clark 1953:116-117; coutene [giant creature (anthropo-, ofidiomorphic?) crawls across the country, naming various objects, laying riverbeds]: Boas 1918, No. 52:85-89.
The Midwest. Ojibwa [see motif B3A; having created land, Nenebojo makes mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers his rod]: Radin 1914, No. 10:22-23; potauatomi [Visakya swims in a boat; Ondatra offers to dive, brings the earth from the bottom first in its paws, then in the mouth; the White Muskrat, the Beaver then also brings; V. makes a pillar from the ground from bottom to surface, creates land; outlines rivers, Muskrat them digs in]: Skinner 1924:332-333.
Plains. Sarsi [The old man drew rivers to the south, his wife to the north, the Old Man was smoother; his wife decorated her lands with lakes and forests; the old man sculpted people without fingers and replied that they were like chips emerge, so people will be reborn after death; the wife replied that then the earth will overflow, let them die for good, like a stone going to the bottom; and let there be fingers; the Old Man did bison so that they kill people; the wife objected: let the bison serve people as food; the old man taught people to hunt buffalo, shoot at the stain on the shoulder blade, where the skin is thin and the meat is soft; so this the stain is called "human flesh"; the old man went south and his wife went north; the old man lay down to rest, the dent on the ground is still visible; the bird shot him in the side, he jumped up, ran where he lay down, there blood stains that became ocher deposits; both rose to heaven, the Old Man became the sun, his wife the Moon]: Dzana-gu 1921, No. 1:3-4; crowe [see B3A motif; the flood floods the earth; Old Coyote commands two ducks dive; white dived twice, did not see the bottom; black brings earth in her paws; the earth is scattered, land has arisen; Old Coyote asks the Smart Woman to make rivers for ducks; she draws channels with a cane]: Lowie 1960:198-200.
California. Vintu [The creator breaks off a piece of the sky, cuts through riverbeds with it]: Curtin 1898:30-31; Pomo [The Coyote makes certain rivers (without details]: Barrett 1933, No. 63/IV: 250; nomlaki [ The Coyote makes the Sacramento River his cane]: Goldschmidt 1951:349.
The Great Southwest. Zunyi [the hero cuts through the riverbed with his foot]: Stevenson 1904:52
Mesoamerica The creator is building rivers. Zotzil: Gossen 1974, No. 145:328; 1980:140-144; Guiteras-Holmes 1961 [after the flood]: 232; Mom: Wagley 1057:177.
Bolivia - Guaporé. Surui [Palop tells birds to urinate, battleships to dig riverbeds; this is how rivers appear]: Mindlin 1995, no. 24:79.
Southern Amazon. Rickbacza [a woman makes her first stone ax and breaks rivers with it; turns into a duck]: Pereira 1994, No. 66:238; an Iranian woman [A lizard man makes rivers (not a decree, how); each The woman who comes for water is told to first have sex with him; one girl refuses, disfigures the Lizard's neck; he hides all the water in the reeds; the girl's mother tells her to give in; then the Lizard returns water; (var.: mother seeks water, scares tapir, he runs, breaks reeds, water pours out]: Pereira 1985, No. 63:228-229.
Chaco. Chamacoko [creator makes a river]: Wilbert, Simoneau 1987a, No. 39:129; chorote [Hawk digs a riverbed]: Wilbert, Simoneau 1987a, No. 41:75; nivacle [mythical aquatic the animal lays its tail on riverbeds]: Wilbert, Simoneau 1987b, No. 31:93; toba: Heredia 1995 [riverbeds dug by battleship]: 478; Wilbert, Simoneau 1982b, No. 175-176 [as in Heredia], 189 [ waterfowl digs a riverbed]: 329-332, 359-360.