The phrase is an allusion to the figurative or literal practice of putting away weapons at the cessation of hostilities among or by Indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Eastern United States and Canada.
[3] Samuel Sewall wrote in 1680 "of the Mischief the Mohawks did; which occasioned Major Pynchon's going to Albany, where meeting with the Sachem 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.
"[4] The Treaty of Hopewell, signed by Col. Benjamin Hawkins, Gen. Andrew Pickens and Headman McIntosh, in Keowee, South Carolina in 1795 established the boundary of the Cherokee Nation, and made use of the phrase "bury the hatchet".
Exactly 50 years after the Battle of Little Bighorn, in 1926, Sioux Indian Chief White Bull and General Edward Settle Godfrey buried the hatchet at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Garryowen, Montana.
[citation needed] The first record of a peace ceremony in San Antonio, Texas was in 1749 between the Spanish commander of the presidio Captain Toribio de Urrutia, Fray Santa Ana and the Lipan Apache people.