bury the hatchet

Example: “After ten years of silence, the two brothers finally buried the hatchet.”

Origin: One of the rare idioms whose literal origin is exactly what it appears to be. Among the nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Confederacy, the founding tradition of the league describes weapons being buried beneath a great tree of peace, and the physical burial of hatchets formed part of real treaty ceremonies — a ritual chosen because it made reconciliation tangible and, crucially, difficult to reverse in a moment of anger. English colonists in New England recorded the practice in accounts of treaty negotiations during the 1600s, and the phrase entered English directly from those descriptions rather than through any metaphorical invention. It is among the small number of expressions in everyday English borrowed wholesale from Native American diplomatic practice.