Bury the Hatchet

The Definition

To make peace; to settle a long-standing grievance or conflict. It describes the act of officially ending a "war" (whether literal or metaphorical) and moving toward a state of reconciliation.

The Deep Dive

This is a literal piece of "junk knowledge" from the diplomatic traditions of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) in North America. Long before European settlers arrived, the Five Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) were locked in a cycle of "blood feuds" and inter-tribal warfare.

According to oral tradition, the Great Peacemaker and Hiawatha brought the message of the Great Law of Peace to the nations.

  • The Tree of Peace: To symbolize the end of the fighting, the leaders of the Five Nations met at a massive white pine tree. They uprooted the tree, exposing a cavern with an underground river.

  • The Ritual: The warriors cast their tomahawks (hatchets) and other weapons of war into the cavern. The Great Peacemaker then replanted the tree over the weapons, declaring that the underground waters would carry the "instruments of war" away to the ends of the earth so they would never be seen by their grandchildren.

The phrase entered the English language in the 1600's as European colonists observed these peace-making ceremonies. Samuel Sewall, a judge in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, recorded the practice in 1680, noting that the "Sachems" had "buried the Hatchet" to signify a binding treaty. By the 18th century, the phrase had moved into general American and British English as a universal metaphor for peace.

Fast Facts

  • The "Digging Up" Inverse: Conversely, to "dig up the hatchet" became the idiom for declaring war or reopening an old wound, a phrase famously used in early American frontier literature.

  • The Wampum Belt: While burying the hatchet was the physical act, the "Hiawatha Belt" of wampum was the legal document that recorded the peace, with five symbols representing the united nations.

  • The Great Seal: Some historians believe the imagery of the arrows held by the eagle on the Great Seal of the United States was influenced by the Haudenosaunee tradition of binding five arrows together to show that a bundle is harder to break than a single branch.

References

  • Sewall, S. (1680). The Diary of Samuel Sewall. (Early colonial observation).

  • Colden, C. (1727). The History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New-York in America.

  • Ammer, C. (2013). The Dictionary of Clichés. Skyhorse Publishing.

  • The Oxford English Dictionary. (2026). Hatchet (n.). Oxford University Press.