chapter 7 Who Can be an Evangelist? Teenminne, Waukeri and James Unaipon at Point McLeay Mission In the purely religious sense anyone might function as an evangelist, spreading spiritual knowledge and changing hearts and minds. Evidence abounds to sug­ gest that women were central to historical processes of conversion. However, because ecclesiastical authority was very rarely vested in women in Protestant missions we know much less about them. This chapter considers gender along­ side age, status and indigenous cultural norms in order to see how certain individuals manage to establish prestige in both indigenous and mission spheres which enabled them to work as evangelists. The Ngarrindjeri woman, Teenminne, who lived at Point McLeay mission in southern South Australia, was singled out by missionary George Taplin as one likely to play a leading role in the burgeoning Christian community. However, the trajectory of her life took a different course from two men at Point McLeay – James Unaipon who distin­ guished himself as an evangelist; and Waukeri who, before his early death, seemed to be on the path to becoming an evangelist. As no direct accounts in their own words survive, we rely on Taplin for information about their Christian beliefs and behaviour and their desire to promulgate Christianity to others. Inevitably this presents a male, missionary perspective on gender relations. James Unaipon was born about 1835 (the year before the British colony of South Australia was established) north of Point McLeay on the Murray River. He grew up in close contact with colonists in the township of Wellington.1 He was converted to Christianity by James Reid of the Scottish Free Church and accom­ panied the missionary on evangelical journeys along the river.2 After Reid drowned in 1863 while crossing Lake Albert in a storm, Unaipon moved to Point McLeay. He married a local woman, Nymbulda, in 1866 with whom he had nine children, including David, whose ethnographic studies feature in Chapter 11. Less is known about Teenminne and Waukeri. Teenminne was a young mar­ ried mother when Taplin arrived at Point McLeay in 1859, which probably means she was born in the early 1840s. She had married a man of high standing 1 Philip Jones, ‘James Unaipon’ Australian Dictionary of Biography National Centre of Bio­ graphy, Australian National University, http://adb.edu.au/biography/unaipon­james­13227/ text7247, accessed 4 July 2013. 2 South Australian Register 26 Aug. 1863, p. 6; Jones, ‘James Unaipon.’ © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi �0.��63/9789004�99344_0�0 <UN> 118 chapter 7 among her clan referred to by Taplin as Old Pelican.3 She bore several more children in the next ten years, most of whom seemed to have died in early childhood. She met her own untimely death on 21 September 1869.4 Waukeri had gone through customary initiation rituals by the time Taplin arrived at Point McLeay in 1859. He died in 1864.5 Understanding the importance of these three individuals in the fledgling Christian community requires some knowl­ edge of Taplin’s mission and its origins. In 1859 the Aborigines’ Friends’ Association, a non­denominational body in Adelaide, South Australia, installed Congregationalist George Taplin as super­ intendent of Point McLeay mission on Lake Alexandrina on the lower reaches of the Murray River. It stood on the lands of the Ngarrindjeri whose name for this ancient camping site was Raukkan. In the ten years that had elapsed since his emigration to South Australia at the age of eighteen Taplin had worked as a teacher and undertaken studies for the ministry. In 1853 he married Martha Burnell who entered enthusiastically into his work at Point McLeay.6 Ordained a minister in 1868, he died at his mission in 1879. The Ngarrindjeri comprised both a political/cultural entity as well as a lan­ guage group composed of several lakinyeri subgroups or clans. They occupied lands along the southern coast of South Australia reaching inland along the lower reaches of the Murray River. Unlike the majority of Aboriginal commu­ nities in Australia, the Ngarrindjeri had a governing body, the tendi, for each lakinyeri which offered both political and legal leadership. Its formal member­ ship included men of high standing but no women. Taplin witnessed at least one meeting of a tendi but colonial interference soon undermined their authority.7 The advent of colonial rule was just one of a number of disruptive 3 Rev. George Taplin, Diary 1859–1879, vols. 1 and 2; Typescript copy University of South Australia Library Special Collection (henceforward Diary), entries for 25 June and 7 Dec. 1859. Taplin notes that girls as young as fourteen were mothers; George Taplin, ‘Narrinyeri’ reprinted in, J.D. Woods, ed., The Native Tribes of South Australia (Adelaide: E S Wigg and Son, 1873) p. 15. 4 Diary 21 Sept. 1869. 5 Diary 4 Jan. 1860, 12 Oct. 1864. By Diane Bell’s calculation of the initiation cycle for men Waukeri must have been eighteen or nineteen years old when Taplin met him, which sug­ gests he was born around 1841–2; Diane Bell, Ngarrindjeri Wuruwarrin: A World that is, Was, and Will Be (North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1998), p. 279. 6 John Harris, One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: A Story of Hope (Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1990), p. 352. 7 George Taplin, The Narrinyeri: An Account of South Australian Aborigines, 2nd ed. (Adelaide: E.S. Wigg and Son, 1878 [1874]), pp. 34–36; Bell, Ngarrindjeri, p. xiv; Graham Jenkin, Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri (Adelaide: Rigby, 1979), p. 18. <UN>.