Bury the hatchet

SEELEY LAKE – The phrase “bury the hatchet” means to cease hostilities and make amends. Not surprisingly, the origin of the phrase comes from Native Americans, who literally did bury hatchets.

Doubtless such ceremonies were performed before Europeans landed on the North American continent but the earliest recorded account, dated 1680, comes from Samuel Sewell a judge, businessman and printer in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He documents how trouble between the colonials and the Native American tribes was settled by Major Pynchon and the chieftains of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Sewall reports, “…they came to an agreement and buried two Axes in the Ground; one for the 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.”

Stephen Patterson in “Native Studies Review” describes an actual Burying the Hatchet Ceremony that took place in Governor Jonathan Belcher’s yard in Halifax, Novia Scotia in 1761. The event brought to an official end to more than 75 years of warfare between the British and the Mi’kmaq peoples.

Four Mi’kmaq chiefs arrived in full warpaint. The Governor presented each with a medal, which was cherished and later passed down through the generations. Belcher and the chiefs moved to a place near the British flag where they ceremoniously buried their tomahawks.

As he covered dirt over his hatchet, one of the chiefs said, “[It is now] impossible for me to make use hereafter of this Instrument of my Hostilities against you.”

The chiefs then ceremoniously washed the warpaint from their bodies.

Another notable ceremony took place in the small town of Garryowen, Mont. 50 years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Located on the former site of Chief Sitting Bull’s camp, the Custer Museum in Garryowen contains many artifacts from that famous battle. When skeletal remains from the battle were unearthed in 1926, a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was erected in front of the museum to house them. A Burial of the Hatchet Ceremony was held to dedicate the granite memorial and commemorate the end of hostilities between the Lakota-Cheyenne and the U.S. Government.

According to the museum’s account, “Fifty-thousand attended the solemn event to see Sioux Chief White Bull and U.S. Army General Edward Godfrey ‘bury the hatchet’ and remember those who died that tragic day five decades before.”

An interesting off-shoot of this type of ceremony has taken place in Delaware on the second day after every federal election since 1791. Called Return Day, it commemorates a time when Delaware colonists cast their votes at the capital in Dover and returned two days later to find out the election results. As part of the festivities, political winners and losers parade around in horse-drawn wagons (or more modern vehicles). The parade culminates in representatives from the Republican, Democratic, Independent and Libertarian parties participating in the ceremonial “burying of the hatchet” in a tub of sand.

“Delaware Online” summed up the reason the ceremony has continued so long by quoting Delaware resident Diane Milam, “It brings everyone together in a celebratory mood, in a festive way. The nastiness is over. It’s time to go forward. Let’s go as a community and as a people and do what we need to do.”