Bury the hatchet is an American English idiom meaning "to make peace". The phrase is an allusion to the figurative or literal practice of putting away weapons at the cessation of hostilities among or by Native Americans in the Eastern United States. It specifically concerns the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy and in Iroquois custom in general. Weapons were to be buried or otherwise cached in time of peace. Europeans first became aware of such a ceremony in 1644: The practice existed long before European settlement of the Americas, though the phrase emerged in English by the 17th century.