On the banks of the River Amur, lived the Beldy clan of people, who loved to be surrounded by as many neighbouring tribes as possible — the more the merrier — to pick a fight with as often as they wanted.
There was nothing much the Beldy men did for a living. The Beldy women cooked and tended to the fields while the men sat and talked, waiting for the next war.
Into this tribe was born a pair of twins. The Beldy people believed that twins bought luck to the clan, and from the day the twins Matonga and Treebek learnt to speak, the Beldy people turned to them for advice.
Weaselling out
One day, a Beldy man set a trap, and a weasel got caught in it. Later, the weasel disappeared.
“I am sure the neighbouring Crees have got the weasel,” fumed the Beldy, and he complained to the chief.
“Declare a war!” thundered the chief. “We shall teach the Cree clan a lesson they’ll never forget.”
When the Beldy women heard of the impending war, they heaved a sigh of despair, and asked the twins for counsel.
“Make the men stop the silly war,” they said.
“Yes, it’s a silly war for a weasel. We’ll talk to the men,” said the twins.
When the Beldy men turned up for advice, the twins said, “You are going to fight a great war. Our enemies have stolen a useless weasel just to humiliate us. Let’s fight them. But they have done such a cowardly act that we should never eat or drink a drop of water from their land,” said the twins.
So, with a war cry, the brave Beldy men set off to the land of the Crees, armed with spears and oodles of food and drink. Weeks passed before the Beldy men reached the outskirts of the Cree territory, where they found a few women plucking berries.
“Hey, women! Tell your men in the village that we are coming to attack them,” cried Treebek.
“Why did you warn them?” asked the chief, who was already exhausted with all the food that he had to carry on his back.
When the Beldy finally reached the village, the Cree men had already got the message. They had run off to hide in their huts to wait till the war-mongering Beldy men would return home.
“Let’s hide in the bushes, and wait for the men. They would come out to hunt and fish, wouldn’t they,” said Matonga.
So the Beldy men crouched behind the bushes, and waited. But only the Cree women came out with long sticks. They fished the Beldy men out, and thrashed them severely.
“Remember!” cried Matonga. “We are the brave Beldy clan, and we don’t hit women.”
So the Beldy men waited behind the bushes. The women came out every morning, and gave them a routine thrashing. The men gritted their teeth and waited… till their food and drink ran out.
“What a stupid war this is,” cried the famished Beldy chief. “We can’t hit the women, but they hit us. How can we fight without food?”
The chief of the Cree clan came out of hiding. “Why don’t we settle this problem amicably?” he asked.
“But we need a return gift, if we are to solve the problem,” said Treebek. “We need the weasel you stole from us.”
“The weasel sent us to war. Now it’s taking us home,” said Matonga.
“That was great counsel, thanks to Matonga and Treebek,” declared the Beldy chief. “We will never go to war again. I’ve had enough!”
A Norwegian folktale retold by Gayathri Krishnan
