Burying The Hatchet

"Bury the hatchet" is a North American English idiom meaning "to make peace". The phrase is an allusion to the figurative or literal practice of putting away weapons at the cessation of hostilities among or by Indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Eastern United States and Canada. It specifically concerns the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy and an Iroquois custom in general. Weapons were to be buried or otherwise cached in time of peace. Europeans first became aware of such a ceremony in 1644: "A translation of Thwaites' monumental work Jesuit Relations, 1644, suggests the practice: "Proclaim that they wish to unite all the nations of the earth and to hurl the hatchet so far into the depths of the earth that it shall never again be seen in the future." The practice existed long before European settlement of the Americas; the phrase emerged in English by the 17th century.