Somewhere between the 15th and 17th centuries, members of the feuding Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca nations gathered on the shores of Onondaga Lake in what is now known as New York State, and formed the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Accounts of this summit describe legendary leader Deganawida – known best as ‘The Peacemaker’ – uprooting the tallest white pine tree in the area and asking the assembled leaders to bury their weapons beneath its roots, providing the genesis for the idiom ‘bury the hatchet’.
