Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 22, No.

4, 1999

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography:

Lillian Wineman and the Trade in Dakota
Beadwork, 1893-19291
Karen V. Hansen

How can researchers learn about the social lives of people and cultures who leave
little or no written record of their lives? This article introduces the idea that one
person's partially documented life story can serve as a kind of prismatic tool,
illuminating a multitude of historical and sociological paths of inquiry about her
contemporaries which might otherwise prove elusive. Breaking with traditional
historical and sociological methods, it shifts the focus from how biography can
illustrate social theory or serve as a case to represent a group, treating it instead
as a critical "point of entry" into a newly refracted, freshly observed array of
social processes and relationships.
KEY WORDS: historical methodology; biography; Lillian Wineman; Dakota Sioux; beadwork; North
Dakota.

Historians and social scientists who seek an interdisciplinary understanding

of lives, societies, and cultures of the past, face a daunting set of challenges with
a limited set of tools. Once a scholar chooses a subject whose actions and ideas
were not recorded in a surviving text, the methodological difficulties increase
dramatically. How are we to come to a deeper understanding of the lives of common
people in the past? Or of a people whose language tradition was oral rather than
written? Or of the interactions of colonizers and colonized in a predominantly
illiterate agrarian society? When a social scientist is limited by the documents that
happen to have survived, an historical researcher can be driven to desperation and
hence creativity. My agenda in this article is to recount my research strategies as
they have emerged in my work-in-progress, in hopes that others will find them
similarly useful.
Direct correspondence to Karen V. Hansen, Department of Sociology, MS 071, Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA 02454-9110.

353
1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

354

Hansen

Soon after I began researching how my Norwegian grandmother came to

grow up on an Indian reservation in North Dakota, I discovered that hers was not
an idiosyncratic history. In fact, many Norwegians settled on the Devils Lake Sioux
Indian Reservation.2 Like Europeans and Yankees in other parts of the country,
they were participants in the U.S. federal government's plan to assimilate Native
Americans and to usurp their land. Early in my research I visited the Lake Region
Heritage Museum in Devils Lake, North Dakota and spied an exhibit of stunning
Indian beadwork and artifacts. Among other things, the glass display case held a
beaded Dakota Sioux scissors holder and pouch, an Ojibwa breechcloth, Western
Sioux moccasins, and a porcupine quill shoulder band.
Given the dearth of written sources, the beadwork appeared to be a trove of
information. Because I am not an archeologist asking questions about how it was
used, nor an art historian asking about the symbolic meaning of the designs, my
questions focused on how the beadwork represented social relationships. My first
question about the beadwork on display was, how did it come to be here? Who
made it? Who collected these artifacts and placed them in a museum? How were
they made? For whom? I discovered that the collection had been owned by Lillian
Wineman, the daughter of a German Jewish father and a Norwegian Protestant
mother. Not only did Wineman appear to be a woman whose family straddled
Jewish and Gentile cultures, but unlike my grandmother and great-grandmother,
she left behind artifactsessays, poems, clothing, furniture, photographs, and
Indian beadwork. The more I learned about Lillian Wineman's privilege and her
simultaneous cultural marginality, the clearer it became that I had to investigate
her life more closely. She potentially provided entr6e into a world I was trying
to understand but found elusive and undocumented in the media to which I had
become accustomed in studying nineteenth century New England.
This article is about the investigative journey I have taken in an effort to
situate this collection of Indian beadwork, how it intersects with the life of Lillian
Wineman, and how this research process, shaped by me as an historical sociologist,
illustrates a useful path of inquiry for historical sociology. Beginning with these
artifacts of material cultural, I have gone on to conduct oral history interviews
with tribal elders, analyze land ownership records, connect with local and tribal
historians, and search through local newspapers. A turning point in this process
was the detection of Lillian Wineman, and understanding how these historical
forces converged in her life. The biography of Lillian Wineman sheds light on
the production and exchange of Dakota beadwork, on ethnic settlement in North
Dakota, and on trade between whites and Indians on the northern Great Plains at
the turn of the twentieth century.
I have not been able to discover the specific stories behind each of these
treasureswho made them, through whose hands they passed, how many lives
they touchedbefore they came to be in Lillian Wineman's trunk. However, I
can put them in context and suggest ways to understand their social meaning and

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography

355

historical importance. Lillian Wineman was a woman at the nexus of cultural and
religious traditions; she was a woman on the cusp of two centuries, and at least
three cultures. Born in Dakota Territory in 1888, Lillian Wineman liked to raise
havoc in the Devils Lake region where she grew updriving a fast car, riding
horses, and parading on her bicycle in a white linen suit, her bright red hair flying
behind her. Living well into her nineties, Wineman cherished the belongings that
represented her family history and important moments in her life. She especially
treasured her trunk full of Indian artifacts and beadwork. In her late life infirmity,
she would request that the trunk be brought to her while she took out each item in
turn and fondled it (Wilcox Interview 1998).
My intention is to illustrate the connections of historic forces that converged
in this particular place and time, through her particular life, and what can be learned
about historical sociological methods from this example. Wineman's biography
offers one way, one among many, to ground and to grapple with the complex
historical forces at play in turn-of-the-century North Dakota. And in turn, my
construction of her biography is shaped by my interests in the larger project, and
my assessment of the ways in which her life is interesting because it intersects
with a larger history (Hertz 1997). And in turn, the multiple ways of approaching
Wineman's life reveal the importance of the researcher's interests and choices in
constructing her history. Like a contemporary interviewer (Hertz 1995), I play
an active role as a researcher attending to certain things and not others, probing
particular issues while ignoring others, developing one aspect of her life and leaving
the remainder to be explored by someone else (Gluck and Patai 1991).
The biography serves as a prism through which to explore and analyze the
social relationships that surrounded the production of the beadwork and the process of it being traded into European hands. Sociologists have found the metaphor
of a prism appealing (e.g., Baca Zinn, Hondagneu-Sotelo, and Messner 1997;
Burawoy 1998; Laslett 1991; O'Brien 1999). Prisms are transparent from a particular vantage point, almost like windows. But if you turn them at a specific angle
and catch the sunlight in a particular way, they refract multiple colors and shaded
images. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1987, p. 1384), prisms "transform the colors of things into a thousand shapes." I argue that those colors and
shapes point to avenues of exploration not necessarily visible through an ordinary
lens.
This prism perspective is valuable to historical sociology for three reasons.
First, the biography as prism alerts the historical sociologist to aspects of the period
otherwise hidden. It prompts one to articulate questions about taken-for-granted
phenomena. Second, the prism metaphor illuminates a life as a point of entry that
then connects to larger social and economic processes. Starting with the specific,
the local and particular, the researcher is able to make connections outward to
examine the social embeddedness of this one life. And third, the prism perspective
illustrates how connections come together in one life. Rather than ending merely as

356

Hansen

unrelated parts of a larger spectrum, those interrelationships can serve to advance

to a more complex and nuanced understanding of historical processes.
Historical sociology as a method has come to be associated primarily with
"big structures, large processes, huge comparisons" (Tilly 1984), and its data
sets have been largely comprised of large archival holdings of newspapers, labor force statistics, and the like. Central subjects include revolutions, transformation of economic systems, development of nation states and the like. Other types
of historical sociological approachesmore micro, more qualitative, smaller in
scopehave co-existed but remain the exceptions (Abbott 1991). I want to broaden
this methodological scope by arguing that individual biographies can be useful in
doing historical sociology. Biography has long been used by historians to understand the role of influential men and women in the arts, in science, in politics, and
during the past few decades, in everyday life. However, because of sociology's
interest in collectivities rather than individuals, and in broad patterns of behavior
rather than idiosyncratic conduct and peculiar psychology, sociologists, particularly those conducting historical research, have largely shied away from a focus on
individuals.
My approach proposes using a biography as a point of entry into an historical
sociological problematic. Rather than consider it a "case" in history, representative
of a population or small group, I counter with using it similarly to the way Dorothy
Smith (1987) uses institutional ethnography. Dorothy Smith (1987, p. 157) says
her intention in an institutional ethnography is not to study a single phenomenon
discretely, but rather to use it as a conduit to the larger social relations which shape
and limit it. In other words, the biography is a way of studying how economic,
cultural, and political forces come to bear upon a life, the relationships that define
it, and the way it changes over time. The biography is not intended to be an isolated
study of an individual life. In its historical context, it can be a tool to lay bare the
"relations of ruling," as Smith (1987) puts it, through this dynamic investigation.
For example, in no way can Lillian Wineman be considered one-dimensionally
representative of women of her time. In some ways, she was the proto-typical insider. She was born in Dakota Territory and could and did belong to an historicallyminded group, the Pioneer Daughters, a North Dakota version of the D. A.R. She
was gregarious, belonged to numerous volunteer organizations, and was a member
of the dominant ethnic group in the stateNorwegians. However, a fuller portrait
of her life places her in a liminal position. She belonged to the Episcopalian church,
not the Lutheran one (as most Norwegians did). Although she was born of a Jewish
German father, I can find no evidence of her religious training in Judaism. I have no
way of assessing to what degree if any, she saw herself as Jewish. While other Jews
lived in the Lake Region (see below), to the majority of the region's inhabitants, the
Jewish religion was a curiosity at best and a target for prejudice at worst. Wineman
spoke Norwegian, English, and a few words in Dakota, but not Hebrew. She was
the only child of a father who was disowned by his family, although a portrait of
her Jewish grandparents hung in her home. And, she never married. Thus, she had

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography

357

a relatively small kin network. A wealthy businessman and political office holder,
her father had extensive land holdings in a region comprised of small, independent
family fanners. In other words, in multiple ways, Lillian Wineman was the exception, not the rule. Also critical, as a collector, Lillian acted as an intermediary
between cultures. Even with her own prejudices about the Dakota, she made an
effort to breech the divide between Indian and white worlds. So Wineman is not
representative of North Dakota Pioneer Daughters, not even Norwegian ones. And
my decision to focus on her religion, ethnicity, and collecting activities necessarily
portrays her in a different light than had I concentrated on her time as an actor in
a theater troupe or the shape of her life as a single woman (Bateson 1989; Hertz
1997).
By starting with a propertied white woman, daughter of a prominent businessman, my investigation necessarily takes a particular path. These ways are not
exclusive, nor are they definitive; and in my larger project they constitute but one
dimension of inquiry. Importantly, someone who purchased Indian beadwork was
in a very different position in 1910 than, for instance, the Dakota woman who
labored to make the beadwork, regardless of whether or not she owned property.
I cannot give an account of how she came to learn her craft, or what it meant to
be a skilled beadworker in her tribe. I cannot speak to her intended recipient of
or market for the work, or what these particular pieces meant to her. Nonetheless,
even with the lopsidedness of the account, the vantage point of Wineman's life
offers multiple ways of seeing and analyzing a complex history.
While the use of biography in historical sociology is not entirely new (see,
Barry 1990; Breines 1986; Hansen 1995; Laslett 1991; Stanley 1993), it remains
a seldom-used tool (Erben 1993). C. Wright Mills, the best-known advocate of
biography as a sociological tool, places it squarely within the discipline: "Social
science deals with problems of biography, of history, and of their intersections
within social structures... These threebiography, history, societyare the coordinate points of the proper study of man [sic]" (Mills 1959, p. 143). In other words,
if the sociological enterprise is to understand human behavior, sociologists must
study individuals as well as groups. That is, we must study individuals embedded
within a social and historical context (Laslett 1991). Franco Ferrarotti (1983, p.68)
writes that "sociological biography is not only an account of lived experiences" but
also of social relationships. Other characteristics of biography include its potential
for exploring social theory (Evans 1993; Reinharz 1994); for illustrating the general
with the particular (Evans 1993, p.7); and for providing a mechanism for analyzing
the links between the private and the public and the social realms (Alpern et al
1992; Evans 1993; Hansen 1994; Laslett, 1991). Sociologists and historians of
laboring classes, women, and other dispossessed peoples have found that biography
provides entrde to under-documented or otherwise lost history. In this article, I
want to shift the focus away from how biographies can illustrate social theory or
historical experiences, to how biographies can serve as points of entry into a newly
refracted, freshly observed array of social processes and relationships.

358

Hansen

Over and over in my previous work, the prism of a single life has altered my
vision and shifted me to a previously unconsidered avenue for discovery (Hansen
1989; 1992; 1995). The prism of biography has also served as an historical sociological tool since I began studying Norwegian immigrant and Dakota Indian
relations in turn-of-the-century North Dakota. Lillian Wineman's life viewed as a
prism refracts many bands of light that could be investigated, including: how Jews
came to settle in North Dakota; the dynamics of anti-Semitism in the rural midwest; the production of Indian beadwork; European trade in furs and other items
with Indians; Norwegian immigration to North America and settlement patterns in
the Great Plain states; homesteading laws; single women in frontier communities;
inter-faith and inter-racial marriages; the role of business people in agricultural
towns; and the Chautauquas and the Chautauqua movement at the turn-of-thecentury, to name a few. In my larger study of relations between the Dakota and
Norwegian immigrants, I plan to pursue this full range of problematics and questions. However, for this article I have selected just a few bands for elaboration,
in order to demonstrate how Wineman's life can illuminate aspects of European
and Yankee trade with Native Americans, Jewish settlement in North Dakota, and
trade in Dakota beadwork.
This paper details these dimensions of her life as they intersect in the artifacts
she left behind. To illustrate my paths of discovery, in the remainder of the article
I outline the cultural and economic interchange between Indians and Europeans
that was set in motion by the fur trade on the Northern Plains. I then trace how
Wineman's family, with its Jewish and Norwegian history, came to live in North
Dakota. In the following section I discuss Dakota women's production of beadwork
and the systems of trade in place that enabled Wineman to purchase it. In the final
section, I return to a discussion of the various points of entry into Wineman's life,
and, in turn, the lessons learned for historical sociology in using biography as a
prism to refract "points of entry" into a broad range of inter-related subjects.
HOW DID TRADE EVOLVE ON THE NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS?
Thousands of years ago, the Great Plains were part of a vast inland sea. Over
millennia, the sea transformed to an "inner ocean" of grassland, and became a home
to fowl, large and small mammals, and, starting approximately 12,000 years ago,
human beings (Schneider 1996). When the ocean receded, it left a large, rather
saline lake in the northeastern corner of the area now known as North Dakota.
The Indians called it "mini-wakan", spirit water, or enchanted water. When the
Europeans came, they translated this into "Devils Lake" (Minnewaukan History
Book Committee 1983, p.l).
For millennia, the Great Plains operated as a major crossroads on the continent
where people and animals migrated and where they settled. Europeans came to
the region beginning in the eighteenth century and tapped into systems of trade

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography

359

between indigenous people, extracting natural resources primarily in the form of

fur pelts. "As the foundation that led to the area's discovery by Euro-Americans,
the fur trade stimulated exploration, was a prime factor in the destruction of Indian
culture, and brought the first white people to settle the area" (Wood 1994, p.2).
It was not the intention of the fur trader to destroy Indian culture or even to take
the land. However, it was through trade that European infectious diseases were
transmitted to indigenous peoples, devastating their population (Thornton 1987).
And trade figured prominently in destroying the free ranging bison that populated
the Great Plains, the mainstay of the diets of the Sioux and Chippewa, among
others (Schneider 1994).
In the fur trade, Indian women were important as cultural mediatorsthrough
the trading itself and by establishing and linking kinship systems via intermarriage
(Kidwell 1992). The Dakota Sioux had an economic system based on exchange and
situated within kinship obligations (DeMallie 1994). Indigenous trade occurred
primarily through kinship networks. "In order for the Euro-Americans to trade
with the Dakota, social bonds had to be created" (Whelan 1993, p.249) because
that made the system compatible with the Sioux social structure. Effective trading
relations were established with white men who came to be called "brother." This kin
designation often occurred through intermarriage: Indian women were linchpins
in this complex system of exchange (Kidwell 1992).
Indian women were not passive pawns in this process, but active participants
in negotiating their position within the fur trade culture. As wives, they taught the
French and British how to survive in the wilderness. They saved the men from
starvation by trapping small game, drying meats, revealing how to identify and
to use the fruits of the land, translating languages, and educating the Europeans
about Indian culture. Most importantly, through child bearing and child rearing,
the Indian women integrated the cultures. For themselves, they chose husbands,
exercised their influence where possible, and arranged to lighten their labors with
the use of European technologies (Kidwell 1992; Van Kirk 1980).
Through this band of the prism, it becomes apparent that the historical dynamic of trade between Europeans and Native Americans carried with it exchange
and friendship as well as the seeds of colonialism. Throughout this history, Indian
women have been at the heart of trade relations on the Great Plains.
HOW DID INDIAN LAND COME TO BE "SETTLED"
BY EURO-AMERICANS?
The fur trade virtually ended around 1867, primarily from over-harvesting of
animals (Wood 1994). Not coincidentally, 1867 is also the year that a new reservation was established in North Dakota, the Devils Lake Sioux Indian Reservation
(now renamed the Spirit Lake Sioux Reservation), at the site of Fort Totten, a
military fort (Schneider 1994). The reservation has been home primarily to the

360

Hansen

Dakota Sioux, who moved to the area after the Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota
in 1862 (Schneider 1994). It covers approximately 245,000 acres, bordered on the
north by Devils Lake itself and on the south by the Sheyenne River.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the reservation land that remained (after
the continued retraction of Indian lands) was held in trust by the U.S. government
for Indian nations. However, beginning with the passage of the Land Allotment
Act of 1887 (also known as the Dawes Act), reservation land was parceled out to
individual Indians for private ownership, rather than collective ownership (Sutton
1975). The government reasoned that owning private property would make farmers
of the Indians and would push them into a form of economic self-sufficiency
compatible with American capitalism. This imposition of private land ownership
(in contrast to tribal ownership) clashed with widely-held Native American values
and disrupted the traditional systems of tribal government (Hoxie 1984). By design,
once reservation land was allotted, hundreds of thousands of acres on reservations
were then treated as "surplus" land. While the tribe retained possession of some
land in addition to that owned by individuals, vast tracts of unfilled open space
were viewed by European-American settlers as "unused." As an eminent historian
of North Dakota, Elwyn Robinson (1965, p. 181, emphasis added), put it, "As the
Indians began to live by fanning and on government rations, it became obvious that
some of the reservations were much larger than they needed to be" In other words,
the U.S. government ignored the Indian approach to thinking about land, culture,
and economic systems, and reneged on its previous treaty obligations. Because it
determined that the Indians did not "need" as much land as they had access to on the
reservations, it opened the unallotted land to white settlers at a very low price. As a
result, white homesteaders gained access to millions of acres heretofore belonging
to Native Americans. The Land Allotment Act of 1904 extended the U.S. federal
encroachment upon Indian territorial integrity by opening 100,000 acres on the
Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation to homesteading by Euro-Americans and
European immigrants (Schneider 1994, p. 138).
The expansion of territory for settlement of the U.S. went hand-in-hand with
immigration. In the Dakotas, territorial and state governments purposely recruited
immigrants, Scandinavians in particular, to help fulfill their vision of settling the
heartland (see propaganda brochure, Dakota: official guide, containing useful information in handyform for settlers andhomeseekers, concerning North and South
Dakota, 1889). In 1910, just six years after the Spirit Lake Reservation had been
opened up to white settlement, the majority of the population (70.6%) of the state
were "foreign-born" or "born of foreign or mixed parents." Norwegians were the
largest ethnic group in North Dakota in 1910 and a major ethnic group in the
Devils Lake region (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1915). The rapid settlement of
the reservation created heterogeneous communities of immigrants and Indians.
Refracting history through the prism of Lillian Wineman's life, we learn that
"pioneers" like Wineman's father and mother did not stumble into Dakota Territory by accident. Through territorial and state settlement plans, through the active

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography

361

recruitment of Scandinavians, through the usurpation of Indian land, white land

seekers were able to pioneer. Wineman's biography raises the question of historical precedents for land taking, and problematizes the North Dakota economic
successes that were predicated upon appropriation of Indian land.

HOW DID JEWS COME TO HOMESTEAD IN NORTH DAKOTA?

The many layers of Lillian Wineman's biography point to the importance
and complexity of ethnicity and religious affiliation in North Dakota early in the
century. While most people shared the lot of being a poor farmer, not everyone
shared a religion. Among the immigrants to North Dakota were Jews from urban
centers in the U.S. and from Germany, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The saga of the
Wineman family illuminates the reasons for this ethnic settlement. Lillian's father,
Samuel L. Wineman left his German-Jewish family in Chicago, where his father
had been involved in real estate, seeking opportunities in Dakota Territory in 1883.
In partnership with his brother, he established a clothing store in Devils Lake and
one in Grand Forks. When the partnership broke up in 1884, Samuel took over
the Devils Lake store and his brother, J.B., took the one in Grand Forks. Over the
course of his life, Samuel was involved in numerous commercial and real estate
ventures. He built the first (and only?) opera house in Devils Lake and by 1918
owned 1,000 acres of land. He promoted development of the region through his
business and his membership in the Commercial Club; he was elected alderman
and mayor of Devils Lake; and he was involved in the Masons, the Woodmen, and
the Knights of Pythias (Hennesey 1918).
This American success story begs the questions: Why North Dakota? Why
Devils Lake? Aside from the obvious potential profits to be made in Dakota Territory as it stood on the brink of statehood, there were two Jewish colonies established
in North Dakota in the early 1880sone at Painted Woods and one in Devils Lake
(Plaut 1963). Although they have different origins, they shared a motivation for
their establishment. The early colonists and the philanthropists that supported these
cooperative communities attempted to establish a safe haven and a livelihood for
those fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. Another group of Jews, who
later called themselves the "Russian Hebrew Society of Ramsey County," settled
in the Township of Sullivan, just north of Devils Lake, which is where Samuel
Wineman bought a quarter section of land in 1892. Wineman and his neighbors
were soon followed by several other "colonies" of Jewish settlers, funded by Baron
de Hirsch, the philanthropist. De Hirsch and the organization he helped to found,
the Jewish Agriculturalist Aid Society, helped Jews found farming communities in
different regions in the U.S. (Schulte 1990). The philosophy of de Hirsch, similar
to other colonization philanthropists, embraced the concept of empowering and
training its aid recipients: "I contend most decidedly against the old system of
alms giving," he wrote, "which only makes so many more beggars; and I consider

362

Hansen

it the greatest problem in philanthropy to make human beings who are capable
of work out of individuals who otherwise must become paupers, and in this way
create useful members of society" (Joseph 1935, p. 15-16). The society was also
concerned with economically diversifying the Jewish community in the U.S. Its
members believed that geographically dispersing people would also help to "ward
off anti-Semitism directed at all Jews in response to the crowded conditions of the
new immigrants" (Shulte 1990, p.233).
All told there were 50 to 60 Jewish families who lived in the Devils Lake
region in the 1890s (Papermaster, 1956). But times were hard and many settlers
were not used to the uncertainties or the rigors of farming. Jewish homesteaders
were a minority, and they had to rely on itinerant rabbis, which made strict religious
observation difficult. Until 1906, the only synagogue in the region was in Grand
Forks, one hundred miles away. Some of the colonists found helpful non-Jewish
neighbors, but many faced anti-Semitism and also resentment over the aid the
wider Jewish community was providing to the struggling colonists.
Like the fur traders before him, Samuel Wineman found marriage within
his religious and ethnic group in this frontier environment challenging. At the
age of 26, when he fell in love and married Trina Moe, a young woman recently
arrived from Norway (via Wisconsin), he was disowned by his family. Samuel's
faith appears to have also changed. In a published collection of laudatory portraits
of civic and business leaders, the author writes, "In religious inclination, Mr.
Wineman is a Protestant" (Hennessey 1918, p.349). Now whether this was a result
of being alienated from his family, intense anti-Semitism of North Dakota, and/or
a spiritual change of heart, this places Mr. Wineman outside his faith of origin,
even while the community identified him as a Jew.
The prism of Lillian Wineman's biography surfaces a unique and otherwise
nearly invisible religious and ethnic community in the Devils Lake region. Obviously, other scholars have written about Jewish settlements in North Dakota
(e.g., Rikoon 1995; Trupin 1984) . However, because of its largely agricultural
economy, rural settlement patterns, and immigration history, North Dakota has
been characterized as Protestant and Northern European. One does not associate
Jewish farmers with the region. Wineman's family's status as religious outsiders
problematizes the religious affiliation of white settlers. Like other bands of the
prism, this prompts the researcher to pose questions about the dominant culture
that otherwise might have gone unasked.

HOW DID THE TRADE IN BEADWORK BECOME

ECONOMICALLY IMPORTANT?
Through another band of the prism, Lillian Wineman's biography illuminates
an important point of cultural contact between Native Americans and European
Americans. Lillian Wineman's collection of Indian beadwork opens the door to a

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography

363

host of questions about how it was produced, why it was produced, who made it,
how was it viewed by its creator, and how it came to be in Wineman's hands. While
Lillian did not live on the reservation, she lived in close proximity to it. On the
reservation, trade and commerce were occasions for encounters between Dakota
and whites. Dakota leased land to white farmers; they sold seed and horses to each
other; and they traded and sold numerous other items, including farm produce and
artwork.
Trade in beadwork and farm products, in this context, provided a point of
contact between cultures. This prompts one to ask about the many ways that these
traders may have served as cultural intermediaries, like the fur traders before them.
And, did the roles of women develop as they had during the fur trade?
Dakota women's involvement with various kinds of home manufacturing
primarily beaded goods and quiltsprovided an important resource to families,
resulting in either goods or cash. Albers (1985) argues that "Although much of
this work was geared toward home consumption, many women created goods
to sell or trade in neighboring white communities. The earnings from this work
were meager, but they did provide Dakota women and their families with sources of
income partially independent of federal control"3 (Albers 1985, p. 119). According
to Albers (1985), women's earnings were also independent of the control of men.
Women's craft work was important in its cultural status as well as its economic
value. In surveying women's involvement in arts and crafts production of many
of the Plains Indians, Schneider (1983, p. 113) says, "The woman who excelled in
crafts not only had a chance to become a member of a select group, but she could
also increase her family's status and wealth by working for others and by teaching
her craft." To borrow an example from the Lakota Sioux of the pre-reservation era,
Lakota women, the primary bead workers, honored warriors by spending many
long, careful hours making them beadwork clothing. In effect, their craft work
"supported [the] social system of generosity and bravery" (Bol 1985, p.37). Bol
(1985, p.37) writes that "If a Lakota man wore a buffalo robe with many rows
of quill work, this was an indication of the high regard in which he was held by
his female relatives." She also argues that women's needlework contributed to
maintaining internal cohesion: "Women's art operated as an important vehicle in
confirming and maintaining kinship relationships" (Bol, 1985, p.38). These values
associated with women's beadwork continued into the early reservation period (the
late nineteenth century). Interestingly, much of the beadwork finery in the early
reservation era was made for children. "By creating particularly fine traditional
clothing for her children, a mother found a method for combating the threat of
assimilation" (Bol 1985, p.49).
Museum records report that Lillian Wineman purchased her beautiful beaded
goods at the Devils Lake Chautauqua. A Chautauqua was a month-long summertime event, similar to a county fair, which focused on education, religion, and
recreation, rather than agriculture and livestock. The emphasis of the Chautauqua
was on the "acquisition of knowledge, sacred and secular" (Snyder 1985, p.81)

364

Hansen

which made it an innovative forum for adult education. The Chautauqua sponsored lectures, music, theater, dance, entertainment, and even provided childcare.
Lecture topics included "the graduated income tax, slum clearance, tariffs, woman
suffrage, juvenile courts, prison reform, pure food laws, the school lunch program, a balanced diet, [and] physical fitness" (Snyder 1985, p.85). At height of
what became a Chautauqua movement, 12,000 sites around the country hosted
Chautauquas. In 1924, the peak of the movement, an estimated 30 million people
participated (Synder 1985).
The Devils Lake Chautauqua, founded in 1893, was situated on the shores
of the lake and covered 160 acres with hundreds of buildings, both temporary
and permanent (Ryan 1990, p.27). A steam boat ferry, the Minnie H., left the
Chautauqua grounds several times daily traveling to other points on the lake,
including Fort Totten on the reservation. Speakers at the Devils Lake Chautauqua
included William Jennings Bryan on the gold standard versus the silver standard
for currency and Carrie Nation on temperance and woman suffrage (Ryan 1990).
One of the highlights featured at the Devils Lake Chautauqua, the third largest
independent Chautauqua in the U.S., was "Indian Day". Indians from all four reservations in North Dakota were invited. "They came in full Indian dress, bringing
their own tipis, and performed grass and war dances and displayed many of their
native crafts and beadwork" (Chautauqua Program 1907 N. page, cited in Ryan
1990). In this context, presumably Lillian Wineman partook of the festivities, and
purchased some of the beautiful beadwork. A question remains: what actually transpired on "Indian Day"? While interviewing Agnes Greene, a Dakota tribal elder, I
told her of the 1907 newspaper article that reported the gathering of all five tribes in
North Dakota for "Indian Day." The article said two thousand Indians participated,
many traveling by canoe across the lake and arriving at the Devils Lake Chautauqua
grounds in full Indian dress (Ryan 1990). Mrs. Greene characterized this portrait
as nonsense. "Who makes up these things?" she wanted to know (Interview with
Greene 1999). She thought the portrait of Indian fanfare simply suited someone's
sense of what the Indians should be doing, and therefore embellished the account.
At the same interview, she showed me a postcard of a troupe of Chautauqua
Indian Day dancers. Her mother stood in the center, dressed in her dancing regalia.
Mrs. Greene's pride in her mother's Chautauqua participation combined with her
skepticism about the newspaper article, has prompted me to search for other oral
and published accounts of the day. Her seasoned resentment towards the white
"invention" of Indian history prompted me to review this newspaper report and
others that I might otherwise have accepted as accurate. Thus I have yet to piece
together the multi-dimensional puzzle of "Indian Day". It will be important to
attend to the interests of the Devils Lake boosters and how they sensationalized
news in order to promote the region. What did "Indian Day" mean to the Dakota
participants? What did it mean to dance for the de facto victors of the protracted
struggle over Indian land? And alternately, how did recent immigrants view these
indigenous people's performance?

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography

365

The overarching point I want to make is that the life of Lillian Wineman led
me to these issues by providing a point of entry into this history. It is possible that
I would have eventually found out about "Indian Day" because it was a ritualized,
highly visible point of contact between whites and Indians. Regardless, approaching "Indian Day" via Lillian Wineman's biography reveals how the Chautauqua,
Dakota beadwork, Norwegian immigration, and U.S. federal land policy converged
in this particular time and place.

THE PRISM OF BIOGRAPHY IN HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY

As with all methodologies, the "biography as prism" approach also has potential drawbacks. There is the danger of idiosyncrasy, for example. An individual
may be so unique and distinct from his or her contemporaries that we learn little
about the historical period and the conditions that shaped his or her experience and
social location. And another danger for the historical sociologist is that in becoming enamored of the puzzle of an individual life, one can lose perspective on the
connections to collectivities and historical environments, and the larger political,
economic, and cultural forces at work. Because of its particularity in a situation
and an historical period, a biography can also limit the vision and narrow the scope
of inquiry.
Although her life is important in its own right, it has not been my objective to
explore Lillian Wineman's biography for its own sake. Rather, I sought a means
to understand and to analyze a far broader spectrum of social and historical experiences. Investigating her life has served as a point of entry into this project. From
the vantage point of the life of one person, the historical world takes on a perspective it otherwise lacks. As with institutional ethnographies like those conducted by
Dorothy Smith (1987), the interconnections of micro- to macro-structures surface,
agency becomes apparent, and history comes alive. Biography roots a study in time
and place, and gives perspective to economic and social processes. As a prism,
Lillian Wineman's life illuminates important avenues of historical pursuit, including the trade in Dakota beadwork, ethnic settlement patterns in North Dakota, the
Chautauqua movement, and the role of single women in frontier communities,
among others.
To summarize, the biography-as-prism strategy serves as a useful tool for
historical sociology in at least three ways. One, it surfaces issues that may remain
submerged in overviews of a topic or a region. The historical sociologist is called
upon to attend to the idiosyncrasies of the individual subject, and through the
process of situating them in historical context may come to question taken-forgranted assumptions about the period or processes. Two, the researcher traces the
particularities of a life to larger historical events, thus revealing the interconnections
between micro- and macro-processes. And three, the bands of the prism spectrum
connect to other lives and larger phenomena, they are not ends in and of themselves.

Hansen

366

Lillian Wineman had a position, a social location, a point of view. Because

her father was a prominent businessman, she had disposable income to purchase
Indian finery. Had I begun this discussion from the vantage point of my Norwegian
great-grandmother, the story would have unfolded in a different way, without the
same intersections. The prism would have refracted a different pattern of light. Or,
more profoundly, had I been able to tell this history from the point of view of the
Dakota woman who made the beadwork, my account of the same series of events
would have been seen from a different angle and taken on different hues.
At the same time, to borrow from another metaphor, a work-in-progress in
many ways approximates map making during a voyage of discovery. My overarching intention is to construct a grand map of largely uncharted relationships.
This task, impossible without the guidance of local knowers and rich sources of
evidence, nonetheless is one made more possible through the use of biography.
The biography is not just about plotting a particular location, but situating a life
within a larger set of cultural practices and inter-relationships.
ENDNOTES
1. I want to thank Andrew Bundy and Anita Carey for their thoughtful support and critical feedback
on several earlier drafts of this article. In addition I want to acknowledge the astute editorial eye
of Rosanna Hertz, who saw the article in the talk and worked with me to develop and clarify my
argument.
2. The tribe changed the name of the reservation to the Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation, in the
mid-1990s. To respect their efforts to make the contemporary English more consonant with its
Dakota meaning, I will refer to the reservation as the Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation, even
when I am discussing its early history. The lake on the reservation's northern border, Devils Lake,
and the town on the other side of the lake, also called Devils Lake, continue to be called by their
original European appellation.
3. Scholars debate the issue of what kind of impact trade had on the status of women. Shoemaker
(1995, p.9) argues that trade had a negative impact, like all assimilationist policies of the U.S.
government. Others argue that women gained power in this transformation. Regardless, one cannot
understand Indian history without understanding the history of the U.S. government policies toward
Indians regarding their language, culture, and economy. "Over the past century, the condition of
Indian participation in the economy, either as land-owners, wage-laborers, or entrepreneurs have
been governed by federally-initiated Indian policies" (Albers 1985, p.l 16).

REFERENCES
Abbott, A. (1991). History and sociology: the lost synthesis. Social Science History, 15,201-238.
Albers, P. (1985). Autonomy and dependency in the lives of Dakota women: a study in historical
change. Review of Radical Political Economics, 17, 109-134.
Alpern, S., J. Antler, E. I. Perry, & I.W. Scobie (Eds.) (1992). The challenge of feminist biography:
Writing the lives of modern American women. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Baca Zinn, M., P. Hondagneu-Sotelo, & MA. Messner (Eds.) (1997). Through the prism of difference:
Readings on sex and gender. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Barry, K. (1990). The new historical syntheses: women's biography. Journal of Women's History, 1,
75-105.

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography

367

Bateson, M.C. (1989). Composing a life. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Berg, G. (1976). North Dakota Oral History Project. Bismarck, ND: State Historical Society of North
Dakota.
Bol, M.C. (1985). Lakota women's artistic strategies in support of the social system. American Indian
Culture and Research Journal, 9, 33-51.
Bonnell, V. (1980). The uses of theory, concepts and comparison in historical sociology. Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 22, 156-173.
Breines, W. (1986). Alone in the 1950s: Anne Parsons and the feminine mystique, Theory and Society,
15, 805-843.
Burawoy, M. (1998). The extended case method. Sociological Theory. 16,4-33.
Dakota: Official guide, containing useful information in handy form for settlers and homeseekers,
concerning North and South Dakota (1889). Aberdeen, Dakota: Prank H. Hagerty, Commissioner
of Immigration.
DeMallie, R.J. (1994). Kinship and biology in Sioux culture. In R.J. DeMallie & A. Ortiz (Eds.),
North American Indian anthropology: Essays on society and culture (pp. 125-146). Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press.
Erben, M. (1993). The problem of other lives: social perspectives on written biography. Sociology, 27,
15-25.
Evans, M. (1993). Reading lives: how the personal might be social. Sociology, 27,5-13.
Ferrarotti, F. (1983). Biography and the social sciences. Social Research, 50, 57-80.
Gjerde, J. (1985). From peasants to farmers: The migration from Balestrand, Norway, to the Upper
Middle West. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cluck, S.B. and D. Patai. (1991). Women's words: The feminist practice of oral history. New York:
Routledge.
Handy-Marcello, B. (1996). The 'main stay': women's productive work on pioneer farms. North Dakota
History, 63, 17-27.
Hansen, K.V. (1989). 'Helped put in a quilt': male intimacy and men's work in nineteenth-century New
England. Gender & Society, 3, 334-354.
. (1992). 'Our eyes behold each other': masculinity and intimate friendship in antebellum New
England. In P. Nardi (Ed.), Men's Friendships (pp.35-58). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
. (1994). A very social time: Crafting community in antebellum New England. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
. (1995). 'No kisses is like youres': an erotic friendship between African-American women during
the mid-nineteenth century. Gender and History, 7, 153-182.
Hennessy, W.B. (1918). History of North Dakota. Bismarck, ND: Bismarck Tribune Company.
Hertz, R. (1995). "Separate but simultaneous interviewing of husbands and wives: making sense of
their stories. Qualitative Inquiry, 1,429-451.
. (Ed.), (1997). Reflexivity and voice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hoxie, F.E. (1984). A final promise: The campaign to assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press.
Interview with E. Wilcox. (1998). Conducted by the author.
Interview with A. Greene. (1999). Conducted by the author.
Joseph, S. (1935). The history of the Baron de Hirsch Fund: The Americanization. Jewish Publication
Society.
Kidwell, C.S. (1992). Indian women as cultural mediators. Ethnohistory, 39, 14-18.
Laslett, B. (1991). Biography as historical sociology: the case of William Fielding Ogburn. Theory and
Society, 20,511-538.
Leiberson, S. (1980). A piece of the pie: Black and White immigrants since 1880. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Lindgren, H. E. (1991). Land in her own name: Women as homesteaders in North Dakota. Fargo, ND:
North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies.
Mills, C.W. (1959). The sociological imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
Minnewaukan History Book Committee (1983). Pioneers and progress. Minnewaukan, ND: Minnewaukan History Book Committee.
O'Brien, J. (1999). Social prisms: Reflections on everyday myths and paradoxes. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Pine Forge Press.

368

Hansen

Oxford English dictionary, compact edition. (1987). New York: Oxford University Press.
Papermaster, I. (1956). History of the North Dakota Jewish community. Unpublished manuscript,
American Jewish Historical Society, Waltham, Massachusetts.
Plaut, W.G. (1963). Jewish colonies at Painted Woods and Devils Lake. North Dakota History, 30,
60-70.
Preston, J. (1993). Domestic ideology, school reformers, and female teachers: schoolteaching becomes
women's work in nineteenth-century New England. New England Quarterly, 66, 531-551.
Reinharz, S. (1994). Feminist biography: the pains, the joys, the dilemmas. In A. Lieblich and R.
Josselson (Eds.), Exploring identity and gender: The narrative study of lives (pp.37-82). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rikoon, J.S. (Ed.), (1995). Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish homesteader on the Northern Plains. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Robinson, E.B. (1966). History of North Dakota. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.
Ryan, J. (1990). Chautauqua in Devils Lake, North Dakota: An historical study of the organization,
the facilities, and programs. Unpublished master's thesis, University of North Dakota, Theater
Arts Department, Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Schneider, F. (1996). Stereotypes, myths, and North Dakota prehistory. In J.D. Lysengen & A.M.
Rathke (Eds.), The centennial anthology of North Dakota History, Journal of the Northern Plains
(pp. 16-26). Bismarck, ND: State Historical Society of North Dakota.
Schneider, M.J. (1983). "Women's work: an examination of women's roles in Plains Indian arts and
crafts." In P. Albers & B. Medicine (Eds.), The hidden /ia//(pp.l01-121). NewYork: University
Press of America.
. (1994). North Dakota Indians: An introduction, second edition. Dubuque, IO: Kendall/Hunt
Publishing.
Schulte, J. (1990). 'Proving up and moving up': Jewish homesteading activity in North Dakota, 19001920. Great Plains Quarterly, 10, 228-244.
Shoemaker, N. (Ed.), (1995). Negotiators of change: Historical perspectives on Native American
women. New York: Routledge.
Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston: Northeastern
University Press.
Snyder, E. E. (1985). The Chautauqua movement in popular culture: a sociological analysis. Journal
of American Culture, 8, 79-90.
Stanley, L. (1993). On auto/biography in sociology. Sociology, 27,41-52.
Sutton, I. (1975). Indian land tenure. New York: Clearwater Publishing.
Thornton, R. (1987). American Indian holocaust and survival: A population history since 1492.
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Tilly, C. (1984). Big structures, large processes, huge comparisons. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Trupin, S. (1984). Dakota diaspora: Memoirs of a Jewish homesteader. Berkeley, CA: Alternative
Press.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1915). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Van Kirk, S. (1980). Many tender ties: Women in fur-trade society, 1670-1870. Norman, OK: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
Whelan, M.K. (1993). Dakota Indian economics and the nineteenth-century fur trade. Ethnohistory,
40, 246-276.
Wineman, L. Papers. State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck, ND.
Wood, W.R. (1994). An introduction to the history of the fur trade on the Northern Plains. North Dakota
History, 61, 2-6.