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The expression comes from a centuries-old practice involving the literal burying of a hatchet, seen among the Native American tribes of North America. Chiefs would meet and bury their weapons as a symbolic gesture of peace.<\/p>\n
An old Iroquois legend tells of two leaders who convinced the five great nations \u2013 the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca \u2013 to stop fighting and form a confederacy. To celebrate the peace, they buried their weapons under the roots of a large, white pine tree, and an underground river washed them away.<\/p>\n
Although it is believed that burying the hatchet ceremonies took place long before Christopher Columbus, the only surviving records come from European accounts. The French Jesuit Relations from 1644 described that when the Iroquois visited Quebec, they wished to \u201cunite 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first English mention comes from Judge Samuel Sewall \u2013 who would later become notorious for presiding over the Salem witch trials<\/a> \u2013 writing in 1680: \u201cI writt to you of the Mischief the Mohawks did\u2026 they came to an agreement and buried two Axes in the Ground; one for English another for themselves; which ceremony to them is more significant & binding than all Articles of Peace, the hatchet being a principal weapon with them.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before the settlers latched onto the phrase and used \u2018bury the hatchet\u2019 as a figurative call for peace. In the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell, Colonel Benjamin Hawkins wrote: \u201cThe hatchet shall be buried forever\u201d, and in 1761, a Burying the Hatchet Ceremony took place between the British and Mi\u2019kmag tribe in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n Why do we say\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat to read more about this history of popular sayings? Here are some of our most popular articles\u2026<\/h4>\n