Kennen Sie den Ausdruck "to bury the hatchet"?

Are you tired of raking the leaves that fall from your neighbour’s tree each autumn? Are you fed up with his non-stop complaining about your summer grill parties? Don’t spend money on a lawyer and don’t bother to call the local police. Just bury the hatchet...

bury the hatchet: to make peace, to settle one’s differences

Mankind is no stranger to conflict. Be it a dispute over grazing lands, centuries-old ethnic hostilities, cold war conflicts that bring about the threat of nuclear strikes, clashes between political parties or a minor disagreement with your boss, it all comes down to a difference of opinion. While conflict can take many forms, there are just as many ways to resolve them.

As we know from reading the daily newspapers and watching the nightly news, violence and bloodshed are sadly a common approach to solving conflicts. A glimpse into various cultures shows us that other choices are available however.

Within the Teduray tribe in the Philippines, conflict resolutions are sealed by cutting pieces of rattan and scraping fingernails. In southern Sudan where disagreements among several tribes over sharing water, grazing lands and fishing areas led to two years of formal negotiations and a peace agreement in January 2005, the tribal chiefs sealed the agreement by sacrificing two bulls.

The Baluchi tribe in Iran, like many traditional peoples, rely on tribal elders to mediate quarrels between members. Custom has it that the guilty party then agrees to apologise and invites the other side to a dinner party where a sheep is slaughtered. Everyone goes home satisfied on full stomachs. Only the poor sheep has to suffer.

Native American Indian tribes have a long history of conflict. The battles between the indigenous folk of America and European settlers as depicted by Hollywood are only part of the story. Wars and disputes between the various tribes over hunting and fishing grounds were not uncommon. The tribal elders were smart enough to recognise when it was time to end the fighting. One symbolic way to achieve peace was to bury the hatchet (das Kriegsbeil begraben).

Many sources point to the Iroquois tribe in the state of New York as the originator of this tradition. The leaders of the Iroquois allegedly convinced five other tribes (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) to cease hostilities among themselves and form a confederacy. To celebrate the new pact, the Iroquois buried their weapons under the roots of a tree. The story goes on to say that an underwater river then washed the weapons away so that they could never be used for fighting again. This is likely an embellishment to give the story a romantic flair, but it makes a nice ending.

The phrase bury the hatchet first began to show up in writing in the 17th century and has since become a common way of describing when a disagreement has been put to rest. With that in mind, the next time you have to clean up those annoying leaves from the neighbour’s tree, instead of chopping it down, just bury the hatchet!

© Paul Smith

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