The year 1881 saw the first definite decision for permanent peace on the part of the Maoris; it marked the nearing end of the necessity for frontier redoubts and blockhouses, and it relieved the border of the Kingite menace which had been an ever-present source of disquiet since white farmers first set the plough to the confiscated lands. Tawhiao laid down his guns at Major Mair’s feet at the border township of Alexandra, and then came a peaceful though martial-appearing march of the Kingite men through the European settlements and much firing of salutes to the dead—the “powder-burning of sorrow”—over the battlefields of the Sixties. Six hundred armed Kingites escorted the tattooed king and his chiefs, the lordly Wahanui and his shawl-kilted cabinet of rangatiras, on the pilgrimage to the scenes of the last despairing fights, and there were amazingly animated scenes in the outermost villages of Waikato when Tawhiao came to town, riding grimly in his buggy, and guarded front and rear by his fierce-faced riflemen. The march was by way of Te Awamutu, and the Cavalry band rode out from the township along the Alexandra Road to meet the Kingites and play them through the village. A right rousing march it was, too, for the tune the bandsmen played as they came riding in at the head of the procession was “The King of the Cannibal Islands.” It was Sergeant Thomas Gresham—then a lawyer in Te Awamutu, and afterwards coroner in Auckland—who suggested the air to Bandmaster Harry Sibley, and that grizzled veteran of the wars seized on the bright idea with joy, and chuckled into his clarionet at the left-handed compliment he was paying his olden adversary. Tawhiao himself was pleased with the liveliness of the music, and later, through an interpreter, inquired the name of the tune; and an angry man was he when he was informed that it was “Te Kingi o Nga Moutere Kai-tangata.” For that same “kai-tangata” was a tender subject; and dour old Tawhiao had no glimmering of a sense of humour.