H34B. The river flows in both directions.

(.30.) .32.35.-.38.41.43.45.48.55.59.61.66.

Somewhere there is or was a river that flowed or was supposed to flow in two directions at once.

(Tajiks), Komi, Forest Nenets, Khanty (northern and eastern?) , Kets, Yakuts (Vilyui), Nanai, Orochi, Ainu, Koyukon and Upper Kuskoquim, Quinolt, Skagit, Puget Sound, Hurons, Mohawks, Seneca, Oneida, Malesit, Penobscot, Yurok, Karok, Embera, Tamanak, Napo, Saparo, chayahuita, shipibo, machigenga, kanamari.

(Wed. Iran - Central Asia. Tajiks (Panjshir) [Milky Way - River (Daryo). This is a river that flows down, one year in one direction, another year in the other, the Milky Way can move in either direction]: Andreev 1927e: 64-65).

Volga - Perm. Komi [a long time ago there was a river in which water flowed to one side and the other to the other; when the land became sinful, water only began to flow downstream]: Uotila 2006, No. 19: 397.

Western Siberia. Forest Nenets (Numto, 1990) [one of the two women wants rivers to flow in both directions so that the land is flat; the other wants people to swim more difficult, to go uphill and downhill]: Golovnev 1995:309; oriental (? and northern ones?) Khanty: Kulemzin 2000 [Por-ne prevents mermaids nöți; they wanted to make mushrooms edible, make one half of the river flow towards the mouth and the other to the origins in order to hunt without oars and rowing; Por-ne disagreed; (204: Por-ne is most likely from Fratria Por; 200: the ancestor of Fratria por is considered to be a bear, and moś is a hare or goose)]: 203; Karjalainen 1922 [ The demon nöți, who lives along the banks of rivers and lakes, wanted to add an edible core to trees, make the sponges growing on trees suitable for food (one type of mushroom is still called nöezi-sä nex), to make rivers flow downstream on one bank and against the current on the other; these attempts thwarted parnī; river whirlpools remind of his efforts]: 384 (transferred to Karjalainen 1995:279); Kets [Hun and Calbesam go hunting; H., When we go down the river, let the water flow down; K., No, let the water flow on the contrary, let us shovel, pull something up ; H. wanted game to fall at the hunter's feet on his orders, K. requires difficult hunting]: Alekseenko 1976:72-73; 2001, No. 37:90.

Eastern Siberia. Western Yakuts (Vilyuisky) [shaman recalls lying at the mouth of the Blood River with the flow back and forth]: Popov 1947:287.

Amur-Sakhalin. Nanais: Lopatin 1922 [=Lopatin 1965:440-441 in Okladnikov 1968; see motive A2; brother Hoday and sister Mämendi produce humans; H. kills two out of three suns; makes one half of Cupid flows up from his fanza, the other down; decides that people will be lazy, lets all the water down]: 165; Sem, Sem 2020, No. 16 [old man's wife: the earth can't accommodate people, there is too much water; old man: must pave the way to another land and make the sun shine harder; people died from the increased heat of the sun; the crow hid behind the stone, leaned out for a drink, turned black; part of the jackdaw's body remained covered, now it is black and white; the water has evaporated, it is now possible to draw on soft stones; the animals got a picture on their bodies and began to distinguish them; the dog understood people and talked herself; the woman hit her mouth against couch, dogs have not talked since then; the river flowed in both directions; woman: people's children in the upper reaches will become lazy, their children too, let the river flow only from top to bottom; man moderated the heat of the sun; people settled; the Aktankan family comes from a woman and a tiger; people have learned everything]: 104-108; Shanshina 2000 (Zagsor family) [Hado is a big beautiful woman with a toothy vagina; men who converged with her died; came together, lifted their skirt, and there were teeth - dog or human; when H. urinated on the shore, the double current in the Amur River became one-sided, as it is now]: 55; Orochi: Kreinovich 1929 [three suns were shining; rivers flowed from one bank to one side, to the other side; one man shot excess suns, the earth cooled down]: 84-85; Margaritov 1888:28 and Shanshina 2000 (according to Margaritov and archive) [the otter swam across the river with her child; in the middle it hit the same stream, and the child was carried away by the opposite; she complained to Anduri that trees were like stones, stones burned like trees (because of three suns), people are like animals, rivers flow in both directions, the wind blows from four sides at once; A. changed all this, told the otter to live in the river]: 76.

Japan. Ainu [rivers used to flow along one bank in one direction and along the other in the opposite direction, so there was no need to paddle at all; people could fly and sit on trees like birds; if They planted something in the morning, but by the middle of the day it had grown; but those who ate such grains turned into horses]: Chamberlaine 1888, No. 44:.

Subarctic. Koyukon: Jette 1908-1909 [a girl rejects her suitors; a young man comes to her with his four nephews; makes her fall into the ground; a man and a woman give him their baby -girl; the mother of the deceased girl causes a flood; only a boy and a girl escape; he throws a harpoon into a wave, she turns into a mountain, into a new land; the girl grows up immediately; new ones come from them humans; young man - Raven]: 312-313; Attla 1983 [huge animals enter the sea, water floods the land; the Great Raven tells the Raven to build a raft; animal people flee on a raft; Raven and Seagull fly to different sides do not find land; many dive, but only the Muskrat pulls clay from the bottom, the Beaver helps to put it on the raft; when enough land has been piled up, the land has reappeared; vegetation has appeared; the Raven drew channels, the water in them flowed in both directions at the same time; then decided that it would be too easy for people, let the rivers flow only downstream; made a man out of stone; decided that he would live like this forever and will not be smart enough (his mind would not be right); then he made it out of clay; this man knew how to think, was able to reproduce his own kind; made a woman; first people died and were reborn, but the Raven decided that people should only live once; he was going to marry, others tried to take the woman away from him; then the Raven brought rotten willow, sprayed dust, it turned into mosquitoes (to bite rivals); after that, human animals became animals]: 129-137 (=Ruppert, Bernet 2001:84-89; narrated in Smelcer 1992:124-125).

The coast is the Plateau. Quinalt [Eagle: Around the quinolt prairie, where edible roots grow, the river flows in both directions, salmon milk is fat, the dead are reborn; Raven: Roots have to go far, rivers flow only down, milk is of little use; the Eagle's son dies; the Raven says he should not be reborn; the Eagle catches salmon using his young son as bait; to imitate the Eagle, the Raven uses his daughter; the girl is drowning, the Raven would like to revive her, but the Eagle refuses to change his mind]: Farrand 1902, No. 7:111 (about the same in Clark 1953:87); skagit [Raven, Norka, Coyote help The creator is to build the world; they abandon the plan to make each river flow in two directions at once]: Clark 1953:139; Haeberlin 1924, No. 17:396; Puget Sound (east, or rather ethnicity, is not a decree.) [Eagle and others: Rivers flow both ways; Raven: one way, otherwise the salmon will come back before they sweep their eggs]: Clark 1953:86-87.

Northeast. Hurons [husband throws his pregnant wife to the ground; Loons pick her up in the air, put her on the Turtle's back; she tells animals to dive; Beaver, Muskrat, Dive can't reach the bottom, some they pop up dead; when the Toad pops up, the Turtle finds some clay in her mouth, gives the woman, who puts clay on the Turtle's shell, the earth grows, the Turtle has been supporting the ground ever since; the twins in The woman's womb is arguing how to be born; the good Tijuskeha (Ioskeha of French sources; "good", "savior") is born normally, the evil Tawiskarong ("flint") comes out of the mother's side, killing her; she is buried; a pumpkin has grown from her head, corn from her breasts, beans and other cultivated plants from her arms and legs; makes snakes, predators, huge mosquitoes, a huge toad that has drunk all the water on the ground; good makes harmless and useful animals; the partridge flies to Taviskarong in search of water; Tijuskeha follows her, rips the Toad's belly, the water pours out; he reduces evil creatures in size; the kind says that he can only be killed with a bag of corn and beans; evil - that he can only be killed with a deer horn; the first to hit the evil, but the good comes to life, kills the evil with the horn; he goes west, becomes the master of the dead ; the good one wanted rivers to flow in both directions, the evil one demanded that only one way]: Hale 1888:180-183; oneida [brother and sister live in heaven; sister gets pregnant, people believe brother; that uproot a tree with glowing flowers, pushing his sister into the hole; water below; The turtle agrees to support the ground; The mink dives, pops up dead with the ground on its paws and muzzle; Loon lays the ground on the Turtle, the earth grows; a woman gives birth to a daughter; a stranger takes her as his wife; puts two arrows on her stomach crosswise, with a blunt end and a sharp end; disappears; two boys quarrel in the womb; Talohiavago wants to go out normally, Daviesgal wants to go out through her mother's side; as a result, she dies; the grandmother kills her grandchildren, throws them into the lake; they come back in the morning; they race to her; T. would win, but his grandmother does not love him, let D. grab herself; their mother would have risen from the grave ten days later, but D. smashed her head with an ax; the old man gives E. corn, T. exchanges flint from his brother for it; T. sees D. picks up a stone, kills a bear coming out of the ground; T. releases game, scatters it on the ground; D. replies that he is most afraid of tree buds; he says he is afraid of deer antlers; T. makes a river flowing in two directions, D. spoils creation; brothers fight as long as they have only bones left; T. promises to return at the end of time]: Waugh in Elm, Antone 2000:42-43, 164-168 (details the river motif with two-way current also recorded in 1973); malesite [Gluscap wants rivers flowing both ways; his brother Mikumwezi: Too good for humans]: Mechling 1914, No. 1:3; penobscot [Kechi Niveskwe creates land and sea; wants rivers to flow in both directions, the sea is always calm, the fire does not go out; Gluskabe: let the rivers flow in one direction, on the sea will be ebb and flow, the fire goes out]: Alger in Speck 1935b: 9, note 43.

California. Yurok [Vohmekumen wants rivers to flow in two directions at once, baskets to carry goods themselves, people eat tar rather than acorns, cook in their armpits; it all turned out to be too difficult carry out; armpits are still hot and with hair]: Kroeber 1976, No. G1:297-298; karok [first, women had to fill the baskets with firewood, they went home themselves; the river was supposed to flow into both parties; Coyote decided that if a man pays a ransom for his wife, let her work; and the man row; this is how he ruined people's lives]: Kroeber, Gifford 1980, No. II13:158-159.

The Northern Andes. Embera [was a river whose upper reaches were in the sea, and the mouth was high on the bank; to change this, God sent a downpour, a flood flooded the earth; one man went where God was; ordered put balsa logs under houses to make houses float; people did not believe it, continued to drink chicha; God left Mount Muharra above the water; man's house swam, he collected cultivated plants in it; swordfish began sawing the mountain; Cormorant, Raven, and Nutria began to dive to kill the fish; Raven, Cormorant did not dive; Nutria grabbed the fish, brought it upstairs; God praised it, let the fish always eat; the water began to descend, The iguana stuck her head out; when the water fell to the level of the iguana's tail, God told the boys to jump into the water; some jumped, others were scared, stayed on the mountain; after the flood, the estuary of the river became where now]: Wassen 1933:111-112.

Guiana. Tamanak [after the flood, Amalivaca and his brother Vochi wanted Orinoco to flow both ways but were unable to do so]: Brett 1880:113 (retelling in Roth 1915, no. 42:136).

Western Amazon. Napo [Apustulus) want rivers to flow both ways, but it failed (it's not specified why)]: Mercier 1979:63; saparo [God wanted rivers to flow in both directions sides; Apustul advised him not to bother with it, God only threw the calebass with water downstream]: Reinburg 1921:15.

Montagna - Jurua. Chayahuita: García Tomas 1994:144-148 [people ask Kumpanama to make the river flow both ways; he brings the tree upstream; the other is about to fall into the opposite side; the Jaguar is called to help him, the second tree falls downstream again], 149 [Kumpanama knocks the cedar upstream with the top of his head; the other is about to fall downstream, for rivers to flow in both directions; the Jaguar asks to let him knock down the tree, it falls back up; small branches turn into rivers, large ones into large rivers; Jaguara K. makes a jaguar]; shipibo: Gebhaert-Sayer 1987, No. 24 [before the flood, people did not know the fire, they cooked in the sun because the sun was closer to the ground; Ucayali flowed in both directions until a person decided that it should only flow down; people rowed with a handle, not a blade; the dove shouted to them how to hold the paddle, they tried it and learned; people were stupid and shy; the forest hens frightened by the voice jumped into the water and drowned]: 49, 372; Waisbard 1959 [before the arrival of Europeans, Ucayali flowed both ways]: 65; machigenga [Irioshi (aka Tasurinchi, Taso'rintsi) lives in the sky, created all good things; Kenti'vakori is underground in dark, smelly world surrounded by his disgusting creatures; created all bad things; first water is everywhere; I. offers to create land; K. does not dare; I. throws his rod into the water, the water is covered even with a crust; K. also throws something, but creates unusable, infertile areas of land (sand, clay, rocks); I. creates useful animals, useful plants, machigenga people; K. - harmful animals, demons, foreigners; if the land were flat, it would be cut through numerous channels that would make it easy to swim anywhere; and now rivers flow down to where on the edge of the earth all the water falls into the abyss; if I. were the only creator, people would not die or suffer from hard work; children would be born without sex and without pain, like I.'s creatures in heaven (in particular, star people)]: Baer 1984:237-241; kanamari [the river always flowed in the direction Tamakori sailed; told me not to look back; but Kirak looked and since then the rivers have only flowed downstream; var. : the river flowed on both sides {in different directions?} , and in the middle the water stood still; Kirak thought it was too convenient for people, sprayed an alcoholic beverage on the stagnant water, all the water in the river flowed in one direction]: Carvalho 2002:273.