Origin
As a child, the death of his parents in a car collision caused a rift in the spirt world that released the Adversary. The Adversary would follow Riverwalker forcing him into a deal. Riverwalker would wait for the day that Echo comes to The Rez and delay her so that the Adversary could take out her family lineage, erasing her from history and freeing the Phoenix Force for his own.
Creation
Riverwalker debuted in Phoenix Song: Echo #1 by Rebecca Roanhorse.
Major Story Arcs
Phoenix Song
When the time comes for Echo to return to The Rez, River was waiting. The mentor she was seeking with help controlling the Phoenix Force had passed, and River stepped in to take his place. Combining his powers with that of the Phoenix, they were able to travel backwards along Echo’s ancestral line, with The Adversary in pursuit of them. The Adversary starts killing her ancestors leaving no future for her to travel back to, forcing her to seek refuge in the White Hot Room. Unfortunately, this is where The Adversary wanted her. He stuck her in a dreamworld while he slowly siphoned her power.
River was repentant for the role he played. He was informed by an ancestor of Echo’s that to enter the White Hot Room, he had to die. By stabbing himself in the chest, his mind entered the room but his body returned to the present, where it was found by Forge who did his best to nurse him back to health. Forge also enter a meditative state and joined River in the White Hot Room where they fought off the Adversary and managed to wake Echo from her dream state. Combining their powers, they were able to link Adversary with his own ancestral line and send him back to the beginning of time, where he became nothing.
Dream Descent
River was approached by a woman named Ruth who believed she was Kiowa. She was taken from her parents and was given to a white family against the Indian Child Welfare Act. Now, she wanted to find her birth parents. When River used his abilities on her, they became stuck in a comatose state. Ruth was, in fact, a witch, who combined her powers with River. She hoped to tap into his time travel potential and stop both of their parents from being taken away from them.
They would be interrupted by Echo, River’s former girlfriend. River’s friends were instructed to text her if anything would ever go awry during his dream-walking. Ruth was forced to fabricate a world in the mindscape and trap Echo there. Echo proved a better fighter and was able to escape. The duo resorted to plan B, jumping to Echo’s ancestral line and offer her the chance to save her father in exchange for her not stopping them.
Echo rejected their offer, believing they could always make it worse. Or adjust time until the whole world was just gone. River started to doubt their actions and decided to sever his ties to Ruth’s past, returning all three of them to the present. In the aftermath, Echo asked a favor of Tony Stark. He would fund a foundation for The Rez that would help reunite victims of the former adoption practices of American Indian children. River agreed to run the foundation.
Powers
Postcognition: River has the ability to look back into memories and history to see past events.
- Ancestral Line Travel: Although, he never hosted the Phoenix Force, he was upgraded by it, while it was possessing Echo. It allowed him to actual time travel along a person’s ancestral line.