Bury the Hatchet

Rooted in genuine peacemaking traditions among northeastern Native American nations, including the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, where physically burying a tomahawk or war club marked the formal end of hostilities between parties. Colonial-era English writers documented the custom directly, and the phrase entered English from the late 1600s as both a literal description of the ceremony and, increasingly, a figurative one for making peace of any kind.