Nearly every ancient culture had mythological stories about rivers. From Asia, Australia, India, North America and ancient Greece have come tales surrounding rivers and stories to explain how rivers came about. Some stories are about real rivers and some are not. Some stories are about perceived rivers in the sky.

Ancient people of China, Korea and Japan called the Milky Way the Silvery River of Heaven in their own language. One myth from the Eastern Asian people tells that the two stars, Altair and Vega, who resided on opposite sides of the Milky Way, loved each other very much but were kept apart by the Milky Way. It was believed that only once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, birds formed a bridge across the silvery river known as the Milky Way so that they were able to meet. Interestingly, during the Summer Triangle, the stars Altair and Vegas appear to come close together from the perspective of the earth.

The Aborigines of Australia believed that in ancient times the earth was barren and dry. The Sun Mother was told to bring life back to the earth by The Great Father Spirit. As she made her journey across the sky, the Sun Mother awoke the animals and reptiles, which included snakes. As the snakes made their way across the land, their trails created the mighty rivers that became the home for fish and water life.

In India, an ancient Hindu myth about the Ganges River tells of the sixty thousand sons of King Sarga that were burned to death while out hunting for his horse and that their ashes were then washed away by the river. The goddess Ganga, the daughter of Himalaya, was eventually drawn down from her lofty place to the earth to purify the waters of the Ganges River. The river was named after Ganga and people today still believe that the waters of the Ganges will purify their souls because of her sacrifice.

The Native American Spokane tribe tells the myth of the coyote that wanted to marry a pretty young woman and said he would dig out the river to go around the waterfall on the Spokane River so that salmon could travel upstream to where she and her family lived in Coeur d’Alene. However she changed her mind and the coyote stopped digging and salmon have never been able to swim up the river to Coeur d’Alene.

The Native American tribe, Tachi Yokut, of Southern California believed in a myth similar to the myth told by ancient Greeks of the river that the dead must cross to get to the underworld. Tachi Yokut stories were told of an island of the dead which was separated from the world of the living by a bridge over a raging river. This bridge was not very stable and, as the newly deceased would cross the bridge, a bird would fly into the face of the decedent to frighten him or her and, consequently, they would fall off the bridge into the water. Instead of reaching the island, they would then become fish.

Greek mythology tells of five rivers that meet in the center of the underworld. The five rivers each have physical attributes given to them by the ancient Greeks. Cocytus is the “river of lamentation” on the banks of which dead but not interred souls must wonder and lament their position. The river Phlegethon is a “river of fire” and may be the original source of the belief in a fiery lake in Hell. Lethe is the “river of forgetfulness” from which the dead drink to forget their earthly lives. Styx is the “river of hate” and the water of this river was so foul that if a god were to drink from it, he or she would lose their voice for nine years. Most people believe that it is the river Styx that the deceased must cross to get to the underworld, but it is actually the river Archeron. Archeron is the “river of woe”, and the deceased must pay a coin to the ferryman to cross.

Wherever you may live in the world, there is probably an interesting myth surrounding a river nearby.