Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that I always talk about my relationship with my sister as being tumultuous and sometimes violent.  ‘twas true for sure during our teenage years but we’re well beyond that and we get along quite sisterly nowadays.  We buried the hatchet, as it were, decades ago. No, not in one another’s heads.  Gruesome!

Bury the hatchet  . . . to forget about arguments and disagreements with someone and to become friends with them again  . . . is literally what it says . . . to put your weapons in the ground and cover them with soil.  The phrase originates as a Native American tradition.  Tomahawks, knives and bows were ceremoniously buried by tribes when they came to a peace agreement to symbolize the end of war.

According to tradition,  the Iroquois leaders Deganawidah and Hiawatha convinced the Five Nations (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) to stop fighting amongst themselves and form a confederacy. To celebrate the new peace, the Iroquois buried their weapons under the roots of a white pine. An underground river then miraculously washed the weapons away so the tribes could never use them against each other again. 

A valuable moral to be learned from a brave and noble people.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

Albert Einstein