In early colonial Aotearoa New Zealand, James Reddy Clendon seemed to be everywhere, and with irons in all sorts of fires. He was there in 1835 when Ngāpuhi chiefs signed the Declaration of Independence, and again at Waitangi five years later to witness a signing of Te Tiriti. A ship owner, then a key early trader in the Bay of Islands, Northland Māori nicknamed him ‘Tuatara’, because in his early, desperate days casting around for timber and cargo to fill his boat he seemed like a hungry lizard. Clendon variously held the roles of United States Consul, founding Chairman of the New Zealand Banking Co and Resident Magistrate at Rāwene, in the Hokianga, where in 1862 he settled with his second wife, Jane, and several children from both marriages.