Nathaniel Pepper
Nathaniel Pepper (c. 1841 – 7 March 1877)[2] was a Wotjoballuk man from Victoria's Wimmera district who became a prominent Aboriginal evangelist and teacher.
Among the first students at Ebenezer mission, founded in 1859 by Moravian missionaries Friedrich Hagenauer and Friedrich Spieseke, he quickly learned to read, teach, and preach in his own language, and his 1860 baptism was widely publicised as proof of the mission's success. Nathaniel was the first Aboriginal person to be baptised in Australia. Tuberculosis afflicted him for much of his life, costing him a lung and killing his first wife, Rachel Warndekan, in 1869; he remarried in 1870 to Louise Arbuckle and moved to Ramahyuck mission in Gippsland, working as a carpenter, farmer, teacher, and preacher respected by both Aboriginal and white communities.
He died on 7 March 1877, aged 36.[3]
References
[edit]- ↑ Smyth, Robert Brough (2010). Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania Compiled from Various Sources for the Government of Victoria. Cambridge Library Collection - Linguistics. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511695230. ISBN 978-1-108-00657-6.
- ↑ De Araugo, Tess (2005). "Pepper, Nathaniel (1841–1877), Australian Dictionary of Biography". National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Archived from the original on 2025-05-29. Retrieved 2026-07-24.
- ↑ Kenny, Robert (2007). The Lamb Enters The Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper And The Ruptured World. Scribe Publications. ISBN 9781921640476.