Meaning
To end a quarrel and make peace, at least temporarily. Usually framed as 'bury the hatchet with someone' or 'the hatchet is buried'. Neutral to positive; often used slightly wryly, and 'dig up the hatchet' reverses it. Regional use: General English.
Origin
This idiom reflects a genuine Indigenous North American diplomatic custom, unlike many 'Indian' phrases invented by fiction: weapons were buried or otherwise hidden at the conclusion of peace, a practice tied in tradition to the founding of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and likely predating European settlement. Europeans recorded such a ceremony as early as 1644, in the Jesuit Relations, which describes hurling a hatchet 'so far into the depths of the earth that it shall never again be seen'. The earliest English account of an actual axe-burial is Samuel Sewall's diary entry of 1680, describing Major Pynchon and a Mohawk sachem burying two axes to seal a peace that Sewall judged more binding than written articles. The phrase itself appears in print in Cadwallader Colden's The History of the Five Indian Nations (1747), urging nations to 'bury the Hatchet, and to make a Covenant-chain'.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- bury the axe
- bury the tomahawk
- dig up the hatchet
- the hatchet is buried
Usage Examples
- After years of feuding over the boundary, the two farmers finally buried the hatchet.
- The unions and the airline buried the hatchet long enough to negotiate a rescue package.
- She warned that old rivalries could be rekindled the moment someone dug up the hatchet.