Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 22, No. 4, 1999

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography:Lillian Wineman and the Trade in DakotaBeadwork, 1893-19291

Karen V. Hansen

How can researchers learn about the social lives of people and cultures who leavelittle or no written record of their lives? This article introduces the idea that oneperson's partially documented life story can serve as a kind of prismatic tool,illuminating a multitude of historical and sociological paths of inquiry about hercontemporaries which might otherwise prove elusive. Breaking with traditionalhistorical and sociological methods, it shifts the focus from how biography canillustrate social theory or serve as a case to represent a group, treating it insteadas a critical "point of entry" into a newly refracted, freshly observed array ofsocial processes and relationships.

Historians and social scientists who seek an interdisciplinary understandingof lives, societies, and cultures of the past, face a daunting set of challenges witha limited set of tools. Once a scholar chooses a subject whose actions and ideaswere not recorded in a surviving text, the methodological difficulties increasedramatically. How are we to come to a deeper understanding of the lives of commonpeople in the past? Or of a people whose language tradition was oral rather thanwritten? Or of the interactions of colonizers and colonized in a predominantlyilliterate agrarian society? When a social scientist is limited by the documents thathappen to have survived, an historical researcher can be driven to desperation andhence creativity. My agenda in this article is to recount my research strategies asthey have emerged in my work-in-progress, in hopes that others will find themsimilarly useful.

Direct correspondence to Karen V. Hansen, Department of Sociology, MS 071, Brandeis University,Waltham, MA 02454-9110.

KEY WORDS: historical methodology; biography; Lillian Wineman; Dakota Sioux; beadwork; NorthDakota.

353

1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

Soon after I began researching how my Norwegian grandmother came togrow up on an Indian reservation in North Dakota, I discovered that hers was notan idiosyncratic history. In fact, many Norwegians settled on the Devils Lake SiouxIndian 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 NativeAmericans and to usurp their land. Early in my research I visited the Lake RegionHeritage Museum in Devils Lake, North Dakota and spied an exhibit of stunningIndian beadwork and artifacts. Among other things, the glass display case held abeaded Dakota Sioux scissors holder and pouch, an Ojibwa breechcloth, WesternSioux moccasins, and a porcupine quill shoulder band.

Given the dearth of written sources, the beadwork appeared to be a trove ofinformation. Because I am not an archeologist asking questions about how it wasused, nor an art historian asking about the symbolic meaning of the designs, myquestions focused on how the beadwork represented social relationships. My firstquestion about the beadwork on display was, how did it come to be here? Whomade it? Who collected these artifacts and placed them in a museum? How werethey made? For whom? I discovered that the collection had been owned by LillianWineman, the daughter of a German Jewish father and a Norwegian Protestantmother. Not only did Wineman appear to be a woman whose family straddledJewish and Gentile cultures, but unlike my grandmother and great-grandmother,she left behind artifactsessays, poems, clothing, furniture, photographs, andIndian beadwork. The more I learned about Lillian Wineman's privilege and hersimultaneous cultural marginality, the clearer it became that I had to investigateher life more closely. She potentially provided entr6e into a world I was tryingto understand but found elusive and undocumented in the media to which I hadbecome accustomed in studying nineteenth century New England.

This article is about the investigative journey I have taken in an effort tosituate this collection of Indian beadwork, how it intersects with the life of LillianWineman, and how this research process, shaped by me as an historical sociologist,illustrates a useful path of inquiry for historical sociology. Beginning with theseartifacts of material cultural, I have gone on to conduct oral history interviewswith tribal elders, analyze land ownership records, connect with local and tribalhistorians, and search through local newspapers. A turning point in this processwas the detection of Lillian Wineman, and understanding how these historicalforces converged in her life. The biography of Lillian Wineman sheds light onthe production and exchange of Dakota beadwork, on ethnic settlement in NorthDakota, and on trade between whites and Indians on the northern Great Plains atthe turn of the twentieth century.

I have not been able to discover the specific stories behind each of thesetreasureswho made them, through whose hands they passed, how many livesthey touchedbefore they came to be in Lillian Wineman's trunk. However, Ican put them in context and suggest ways to understand their social meaning and

354 Hansen

historical importance. Lillian Wineman was a woman at the nexus of cultural andreligious traditions; she was a woman on the cusp of two centuries, and at leastthree cultures. Born in Dakota Territory in 1888, Lillian Wineman liked to raisehavoc in the Devils Lake region where she grew updriving a fast car, ridinghorses, and parading on her bicycle in a white linen suit, her bright red hair flyingbehind her. Living well into her nineties, Wineman cherished the belongings thatrepresented her family history and important moments in her life. She especiallytreasured 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 inturn and fondled it (Wilcox Interview 1998).

My intention is to illustrate the connections of historic forces that convergedin this particular place and time, through her particular life, and what can be learnedabout historical sociological methods from this example. Wineman's biographyoffers one way, one among many, to ground and to grapple with the complexhistorical forces at play in turn-of-the-century North Dakota. And in turn, myconstruction of her biography is shaped by my interests in the larger project, andmy assessment of the ways in which her life is interesting because it intersectswith a larger history (Hertz 1997). And in turn, the multiple ways of approachingWineman's life reveal the importance of the researcher's interests and choices inconstructing her history. Like a contemporary interviewer (Hertz 1995), I playan active role as a researcher attending to certain things and not others, probingparticular issues while ignoring others, developing one aspect of her life and leavingthe remainder to be explored by someone else (Gluck and Patai 1991).

The biography serves as a prism through which to explore and analyze thesocial relationships that surrounded the production of the beadwork and the pro-cess of it being traded into European hands. Sociologists have found the metaphorof a prism appealing (e.g., Baca Zinn, Hondagneu-Sotelo, and Messner 1997;Burawoy 1998; Laslett 1991; O'Brien 1999). Prisms are transparent from a par-ticular vantage point, almost like windows. But if you turn them at a specific angleand catch the sunlight in a particular way, they refract multiple colors and shadedimages. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1987, p. 1384), prisms "trans-form the colors of things into a thousand shapes." I argue that those colors andshapes point to avenues of exploration not necessarily visible through an ordinarylens.

This prism perspective is valuable to historical sociology for three reasons.First, the biography as prism alerts the historical sociologist to aspects of the periodotherwise hidden. It prompts one to articulate questions about taken-for-grantedphenomena. Second, the prism metaphor illuminates a life as a point of entry thatthen connects to larger social and economic processes. Starting with the specific,the local and particular, the researcher is able to make connections outward toexamine the social embeddedness of this one life. And third, the prism perspectiveillustrates how connections come together in one life. Rather than ending merely as

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography 355

unrelated parts of a larger spectrum, those interrelationships can serve to advanceto 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 datasets have been largely comprised of large archival holdings of newspapers, la-bor force statistics, and the like. Central subjects include revolutions, transforma-tion of economic systems, development of nation states and the like. Other typesof historical sociological approachesmore micro, more qualitative, smaller inscopehave co-existed but remain the exceptions (Abbott 1991). I want to broadenthis methodological scope by arguing that individual biographies can be useful indoing historical sociology. Biography has long been used by historians to under-stand the role of influential men and women in the arts, in science, in politics, andduring the past few decades, in everyday life. However, because of sociology'sinterest in collectivities rather than individuals, and in broad patterns of behaviorrather than idiosyncratic conduct and peculiar psychology, sociologists, particu-larly those conducting historical research, have largely shied away from a focus onindividuals.

My approach proposes using a biography as a point of entry into an historicalsociological problematic. Rather than consider it a "case" in history, representativeof a population or small group, I counter with using it similarly to the way DorothySmith (1987) uses institutional ethnography. Dorothy Smith (1987, p. 157) saysher intention in an institutional ethnography is not to study a single phenomenondiscretely, but rather to use it as a conduit to the larger social relations which shapeand 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 defineit, and the way it changes over time. The biography is not intended to be an isolatedstudy 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-dimensionallyrepresentative of women of her time. In some ways, she was the proto-typical in-sider. She was born in Dakota Territory and could and did belong to an historically-minded group, the Pioneer Daughters, a North Dakota version of the D. A.R. Shewas gregarious, belonged to numerous volunteer organizations, and was a memberof the dominant ethnic group in the stateNorwegians. However, a fuller portraitof 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 JewishGerman father, I can find no evidence of her religious training in Judaism. I have noway of assessing to what degree if any, she saw herself as Jewish. While other Jewslived in the Lake Region (see below), to the majority of the region's inhabitants, theJewish religion was a curiosity at best and a target for prejudice at worst. Winemanspoke Norwegian, English, and a few words in Dakota, but not Hebrew. She wasthe only child of a father who was disowned by his family, although a portrait ofher Jewish grandparents hung in her home. And, she never married. Thus, she had

356 Hansen

a relatively small kin network. A wealthy businessman and political office holder,her father had extensive land holdings in a region comprised of small, independentfamily fanners. In other words, in multiple ways, Lillian Wineman was the ex-ception, not the rule. Also critical, as a collector, Lillian acted as an intermediarybetween cultures. Even with her own prejudices about the Dakota, she made aneffort to breech the divide between Indian and white worlds. So Wineman is notrepresentative of North Dakota Pioneer Daughters, not even Norwegian ones. Andmy decision to focus on her religion, ethnicity, and collecting activities necessarilyportrays her in a different light than had I concentrated on her time as an actor ina theater troupe or the shape of her life as a single woman (Bateson 1989; Hertz1997).

By starting with a propertied white woman, daughter of a prominent busi-nessman, my investigation necessarily takes a particular path. These ways are notexclusive, nor are they definitive; and in my larger project they constitute but onedimension of inquiry. Importantly, someone who purchased Indian beadwork wasin a very different position in 1910 than, for instance, the Dakota woman wholabored 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 tobe a skilled beadworker in her tribe. I cannot speak to her intended recipient ofor 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 lifeoffers 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 remainsa seldom-used tool (Erben 1993). C. Wright Mills, the best-known advocate ofbiography as a sociological tool, places it squarely within the discipline: "Socialscience deals with problems of biography, of history, and of their intersectionswithin social structures... These threebiography, history, societyare the co-ordinate 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 muststudy individuals as well as groups. That is, we must study individuals embeddedwithin a social and historical context (Laslett 1991). Franco Ferrarotti (1983, p.68)writes that "sociological biography is not only an account of lived experiences" butalso of social relationships. Other characteristics of biography include its potentialfor exploring social theory (Evans 1993; Reinharz 1994); for illustrating the generalwith the particular (Evans 1993, p.7); and for providing a mechanism for analyzingthe links between the private and the public and the social realms (Alpern et al1992; Evans 1993; Hansen 1994; Laslett, 1991). Sociologists and historians oflaboring classes, women, and other dispossessed peoples have found that biographyprovides entrde to under-documented or otherwise lost history. In this article, Iwant to shift the focus away from how biographies can illustrate social theory orhistorical experiences, to how biographies can serve as points of entry into a newlyrefracted, freshly observed array of social processes and relationships.

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography 357

Over and over in my previous work, the prism of a single life has altered myvision and shifted me to a previously unconsidered avenue for discovery (Hansen1989; 1992; 1995). The prism of biography has also served as an historical so-ciological tool since I began studying Norwegian immigrant and Dakota Indianrelations in turn-of-the-century North Dakota. Lillian Wineman's life viewed as aprism refracts many bands of light that could be investigated, including: how Jewscame to settle in North Dakota; the dynamics of anti-Semitism in the rural mid-west; the production of Indian beadwork; European trade in furs and other itemswith Indians; Norwegian immigration to North America and settlement patterns inthe Great Plain states; homesteading laws; single women in frontier communities;inter-faith and inter-racial marriages; the role of business people in agriculturaltowns; and the Chautauquas and the Chautauqua movement at the turn-of-the-century, to name a few. In my larger study of relations between the Dakota andNorwegian immigrants, I plan to pursue this full range of problematics and ques-tions. 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 Europeanand Yankee trade with Native Americans, Jewish settlement in North Dakota, andtrade in Dakota beadwork.

This paper details these dimensions of her life as they intersect in the artifactsshe left behind. To illustrate my paths of discovery, in the remainder of the articleI outline the cultural and economic interchange between Indians and Europeansthat was set in motion by the fur trade on the Northern Plains. I then trace howWineman's family, with its Jewish and Norwegian history, came to live in NorthDakota. In the following section I discuss Dakota women's production of beadworkand the systems of trade in place that enabled Wineman to purchase it. In the finalsection, 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 aprism 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. Overmillennia, the sea transformed to an "inner ocean" of grassland, and became a hometo fowl, large and small mammals, and, starting approximately 12,000 years ago,human beings (Schneider 1996). When the ocean receded, it left a large, rathersaline 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 theEuropeans came, they translated this into "Devils Lake" (Minnewaukan HistoryBook Committee 1983, p.l).

For millennia, the Great Plains operated as a major crossroads on the continentwhere people and animals migrated and where they settled. Europeans came tothe region beginning in the eighteenth century and tapped into systems of trade

Hansen358

between indigenous people, extracting natural resources primarily in the form offur 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 Indianculture, 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 takethe land. However, it was through trade that European infectious diseases weretransmitted to indigenous peoples, devastating their population (Thornton 1987).And trade figured prominently in destroying the free ranging bison that populatedthe Great Plains, the mainstay of the diets of the Sioux and Chippewa, amongothers (Schneider 1994).

In the fur trade, Indian women were important as cultural mediatorsthroughthe trading itself and by establishing and linking kinship systems via intermarriage(Kidwell 1992). The Dakota Sioux had an economic system based on exchange andsituated within kinship obligations (DeMallie 1994). Indigenous trade occurredprimarily through kinship networks. "In order for the Euro-Americans to tradewith the Dakota, social bonds had to be created" (Whelan 1993, p.249) becausethat made the system compatible with the Sioux social structure. Effective tradingrelations were established with white men who came to be called "brother." This kindesignation often occurred through intermarriage: Indian women were linchpinsin this complex system of exchange (Kidwell 1992).

Indian women were not passive pawns in this process, but active participantsin negotiating their position within the fur trade culture. As wives, they taught theFrench and British how to survive in the wilderness. They saved the men fromstarvation by trapping small game, drying meats, revealing how to identify andto use the fruits of the land, translating languages, and educating the Europeansabout 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 withthe use of European technologies (Kidwell 1992; Van Kirk 1980).

Through this band of the prism, it becomes apparent that the historical dy-namic of trade between Europeans and Native Americans carried with it exchangeand friendship as well as the seeds of colonialism. Throughout this history, Indianwomen 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 ofanimals (Wood 1994). Not coincidentally, 1867 is also the year that a new reser-vation was established in North Dakota, the Devils Lake Sioux Indian Reservation(now renamed the Spirit Lake Sioux Reservation), at the site of Fort Totten, amilitary fort (Schneider 1994). The reservation has been home primarily to the

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography 359

Dakota Sioux, who moved to the area after the Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesotain 1862 (Schneider 1994). It covers approximately 245,000 acres, bordered on thenorth by Devils Lake itself and on the south by the Sheyenne River.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the reservation land that remained (afterthe continued retraction of Indian lands) was held in trust by the U.S. governmentfor Indian nations. However, beginning with the passage of the Land AllotmentAct of 1887 (also known as the Dawes Act), reservation land was parceled out toindividual Indians for private ownership, rather than collective ownership (Sutton1975). The government reasoned that owning private property would make farmersof the Indians and would push them into a form of economic self-sufficiencycompatible with American capitalism. This imposition of private land ownership(in contrast to tribal ownership) clashed with widely-held Native American valuesand disrupted the traditional systems of tribal government (Hoxie 1984). By design,once reservation land was allotted, hundreds of thousands of acres on reservationswere then treated as "surplus" land. While the tribe retained possession of someland in addition to that owned by individuals, vast tracts of unfilled open spacewere viewed by European-American settlers as "unused." As an eminent historianof North Dakota, Elwyn Robinson (1965, p. 181, emphasis added), put it, "As theIndians began to live by fanning and on government rations, it became obvious thatsome 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 itdetermined that the Indians did not "need" as much land as they had access to on thereservations, it opened the unallotted land to white settlers at a very low price. As aresult, white homesteaders gained access to millions of acres heretofore belongingto Native Americans. The Land Allotment Act of 1904 extended the U.S. federalencroachment upon Indian territorial integrity by opening 100,000 acres on theSpirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation to homesteading by Euro-Americans andEuropean immigrants (Schneider 1994, p. 138).

The expansion of territory for settlement of the U.S. went hand-in-hand withimmigration. In the Dakotas, territorial and state governments purposely recruitedimmigrants, Scandinavians in particular, to help fulfill their vision of settling theheartland (see propaganda brochure, Dakota: official guide, containing useful in-formation in handyform for settlers andhomeseekers, concerning North and SouthDakota, 1889). In 1910, just six years after the Spirit Lake Reservation had beenopened up to white settlement, the majority of the population (70.6%) of the statewere "foreign-born" or "born of foreign or mixed parents." Norwegians were thelargest ethnic group in North Dakota in 1910 and a major ethnic group in theDevils Lake region (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1915). The rapid settlement ofthe 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 Terri-tory by accident. Through territorial and state settlement plans, through the active

360 Hansen

recruitment of Scandinavians, through the usurpation of Indian land, white landseekers were able to pioneer. Wineman's biography raises the question of histor-ical precedents for land taking, and problematizes the North Dakota economicsuccesses 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 importanceand complexity of ethnicity and religious affiliation in North Dakota early in thecentury. While most people shared the lot of being a poor farmer, not everyoneshared a religion. Among the immigrants to North Dakota were Jews from urbancenters in the U.S. and from Germany, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The saga of theWineman family illuminates the reasons for this ethnic settlement. Lillian's father,Samuel L. Wineman left his German-Jewish family in Chicago, where his fatherhad 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 andone in Grand Forks. When the partnership broke up in 1884, Samuel took overthe Devils Lake store and his brother, J.B., took the one in Grand Forks. Over thecourse of his life, Samuel was involved in numerous commercial and real estateventures. He built the first (and only?) opera house in Devils Lake and by 1918owned 1,000 acres of land. He promoted development of the region through hisbusiness and his membership in the Commercial Club; he was elected aldermanand mayor of Devils Lake; and he was involved in the Masons, the Woodmen, andthe Knights of Pythias (Hennesey 1918).

This American success story begs the questions: Why North Dakota? WhyDevils Lake? Aside from the obvious potential profits to be made in Dakota Terri-tory as it stood on the brink of statehood, there were two Jewish colonies establishedin 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 fortheir establishment. The early colonists and the philanthropists that supported thesecooperative communities attempted to establish a safe haven and a livelihood forthose fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. Another group of Jews, wholater called themselves the "Russian Hebrew Society of Ramsey County," settledin the Township of Sullivan, just north of Devils Lake, which is where SamuelWineman bought a quarter section of land in 1892. Wineman and his neighborswere soon followed by several other "colonies" of Jewish settlers, funded by Baronde Hirsch, the philanthropist. De Hirsch and the organization he helped to found,the Jewish Agriculturalist Aid Society, helped Jews found farming communities indifferent regions in the U.S. (Schulte 1990). The philosophy of de Hirsch, similarto other colonization philanthropists, embraced the concept of empowering andtraining its aid recipients: "I contend most decidedly against the old system ofalms giving," he wrote, "which only makes so many more beggars; and I consider

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography 361

it the greatest problem in philanthropy to make human beings who are capableof work out of individuals who otherwise must become paupers, and in this waycreate useful members of society" (Joseph 1935, p. 15-16). The society was alsoconcerned with economically diversifying the Jewish community in the U.S. Itsmembers believed that geographically dispersing people would also help to "wardoff anti-Semitism directed at all Jews in response to the crowded conditions of thenew immigrants" (Shulte 1990, p.233).

All told there were 50 to 60 Jewish families who lived in the Devils Lakeregion in the 1890s (Papermaster, 1956). But times were hard and many settlerswere not used to the uncertainties or the rigors of farming. Jewish homesteaderswere a minority, and they had to rely on itinerant rabbis, which made strict religiousobservation difficult. Until 1906, the only synagogue in the region was in GrandForks, one hundred miles away. Some of the colonists found helpful non-Jewishneighbors, but many faced anti-Semitism and also resentment over the aid thewider Jewish community was providing to the struggling colonists.

Like the fur traders before him, Samuel Wineman found marriage withinhis religious and ethnic group in this frontier environment challenging. At theage of 26, when he fell in love and married Trina Moe, a young woman recentlyarrived from Norway (via Wisconsin), he was disowned by his family. Samuel'sfaith appears to have also changed. In a published collection of laudatory portraitsof civic and business leaders, the author writes, "In religious inclination, Mr.Wineman is a Protestant" (Hennessey 1918, p.349). Now whether this was a resultof being alienated from his family, intense anti-Semitism of North Dakota, and/ora 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 otherwisenearly invisible religious and ethnic community in the Devils Lake region. Ob-viously, other scholars have written about Jewish settlements in North Dakota(e.g., Rikoon 1995; Trupin 1984) . However, because of its largely agriculturaleconomy, rural settlement patterns, and immigration history, North Dakota hasbeen characterized as Protestant and Northern European. One does not associateJewish farmers with the region. Wineman's family's status as religious outsidersproblematizes the religious affiliation of white settlers. Like other bands of theprism, this prompts the researcher to pose questions about the dominant culturethat otherwise might have gone unasked.

HOW DID THE TRADE IN BEADWORK BECOMEECONOMICALLY IMPORTANT?

Through another band of the prism, Lillian Wineman's biography illuminatesan important point of cultural contact between Native Americans and EuropeanAmericans. Lillian Wineman's collection of Indian beadwork opens the door to a

362 Hansen

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. WhileLillian did not live on the reservation, she lived in close proximity to it. On thereservation, trade and commerce were occasions for encounters between Dakotaand whites. Dakota leased land to white farmers; they sold seed and horses to eachother; and they traded and sold numerous other items, including farm produce andartwork.

Trade in beadwork and farm products, in this context, provided a point ofcontact between cultures. This prompts one to ask about the many ways that thesetraders 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 manufacturingprimarily beaded goods and quiltsprovided an important resource to families,resulting in either goods or cash. Albers (1985) argues that "Although much ofthis work was geared toward home consumption, many women created goodsto sell or trade in neighboring white communities. The earnings from this workwere meager, but they did provide Dakota women and their families with sources ofincome partially independent of federal control"3 (Albers 1985, p. 119). Accordingto 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 economicvalue. In surveying women's involvement in arts and crafts production of manyof the Plains Indians, Schneider (1983, p. 113) says, "The woman who excelled incrafts not only had a chance to become a member of a select group, but she couldalso increase her family's status and wealth by working for others and by teachingher craft." To borrow an example from the Lakota Sioux of the pre-reservation era,Lakota women, the primary bead workers, honored warriors by spending manylong, 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 rowsof quill work, this was an indication of the high regard in which he was held byhis female relatives." She also argues that women's needlework contributed tomaintaining internal cohesion: "Women's art operated as an important vehicle inconfirming and maintaining kinship relationships" (Bol, 1985, p.38). These valuesassociated with women's beadwork continued into the early reservation period (thelate nineteenth century). Interestingly, much of the beadwork finery in the earlyreservation era was made for children. "By creating particularly fine traditionalclothing for her children, a mother found a method for combating the threat ofassimilation" (Bol 1985, p.49).

Museum records report that Lillian Wineman purchased her beautiful beadedgoods at the Devils Lake Chautauqua. A Chautauqua was a month-long summer-time event, similar to a county fair, which focused on education, religion, andrecreation, rather than agriculture and livestock. The emphasis of the Chautauquawas on the "acquisition of knowledge, sacred and secular" (Snyder 1985, p.81)

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography 363

which made it an innovative forum for adult education. The Chautauqua spon-sored lectures, music, theater, dance, entertainment, and even provided childcare.Lecture topics included "the graduated income tax, slum clearance, tariffs, womansuffrage, juvenile courts, prison reform, pure food laws, the school lunch pro-gram, a balanced diet, [and] physical fitness" (Snyder 1985, p.85). At height ofwhat became a Chautauqua movement, 12,000 sites around the country hostedChautauquas. In 1924, the peak of the movement, an estimated 30 million peopleparticipated (Synder 1985).

The Devils Lake Chautauqua, founded in 1893, was situated on the shoresof the lake and covered 160 acres with hundreds of buildings, both temporaryand permanent (Ryan 1990, p.27). A steam boat ferry, the Minnie H., left theChautauqua grounds several times daily traveling to other points on the lake,including Fort Totten on the reservation. Speakers at the Devils Lake Chautauquaincluded William Jennings Bryan on the gold standard versus the silver standardfor currency and Carrie Nation on temperance and woman suffrage (Ryan 1990).

One of the highlights featured at the Devils Lake Chautauqua, the third largestindependent Chautauqua in the U.S., was "Indian Day". Indians from all four reser-vations in North Dakota were invited. "They came in full Indian dress, bringingtheir own tipis, and performed grass and war dances and displayed many of theirnative crafts and beadwork" (Chautauqua Program 1907 N. page, cited in Ryan1990). In this context, presumably Lillian Wineman partook of the festivities, andpurchased some of the beautiful beadwork. A question remains: what actually tran-spired on "Indian Day"? While interviewing Agnes Greene, a Dakota tribal elder, Itold her of the 1907 newspaper article that reported the gathering of all five tribes inNorth Dakota for "Indian Day." The article said two thousand Indians participated,many traveling by canoe across the lake and arriving at the Devils Lake Chautauquagrounds in full Indian dress (Ryan 1990). Mrs. Greene characterized this portraitas nonsense. "Who makes up these things?" she wanted to know (Interview withGreene 1999). She thought the portrait of Indian fanfare simply suited someone'ssense 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 ChautauquaIndian 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 herskepticism about the newspaper article, has prompted me to search for other oraland published accounts of the day. Her seasoned resentment towards the white"invention" of Indian history prompted me to review this newspaper report andothers that I might otherwise have accepted as accurate. Thus I have yet to piecetogether the multi-dimensional puzzle of "Indian Day". It will be important toattend to the interests of the Devils Lake boosters and how they sensationalizednews in order to promote the region. What did "Indian Day" mean to the Dakotaparticipants? What did it mean to dance for the de facto victors of the protractedstruggle over Indian land? And alternately, how did recent immigrants view theseindigenous people's performance?

364 Hansen

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

THE PRISM OF BIOGRAPHY IN HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY

As with all methodologies, the "biography as prism" approach also has po-tential drawbacks. There is the danger of idiosyncrasy, for example. An individualmay be so unique and distinct from his or her contemporaries that we learn littleabout the historical period and the conditions that shaped his or her experience andsocial location. And another danger for the historical sociologist is that in becom-ing enamored of the puzzle of an individual life, one can lose perspective on theconnections to collectivities and historical environments, and the larger political,economic, and cultural forces at work. Because of its particularity in a situationand an historical period, a biography can also limit the vision and narrow the scopeof inquiry.

Although her life is important in its own right, it has not been my objective toexplore Lillian Wineman's biography for its own sake. Rather, I sought a meansto understand and to analyze a far broader spectrum of social and historical expe-riences. Investigating her life has served as a point of entry into this project. Fromthe vantage point of the life of one person, the historical world takes on a perspec-tive it otherwise lacks. As with institutional ethnographies like those conducted byDorothy Smith (1987), the interconnections of micro- to macro-structures surface,agency becomes apparent, and history comes alive. Biography roots a study in timeand place, and gives perspective to economic and social processes. As a prism,Lillian Wineman's life illuminates important avenues of historical pursuit, includ-ing the trade in Dakota beadwork, ethnic settlement patterns in North Dakota, theChautauqua movement, and the role of single women in frontier communities,among others.

To summarize, the biography-as-prism strategy serves as a useful tool forhistorical sociology in at least three ways. One, it surfaces issues that may remainsubmerged in overviews of a topic or a region. The historical sociologist is calledupon to attend to the idiosyncrasies of the individual subject, and through theprocess of situating them in historical context may come to question taken-for-granted assumptions about the period or processes. Two, the researcher traces theparticularities of a life to larger historical events, thus revealing the interconnectionsbetween micro- and macro-processes. And three, the bands of the prism spectrumconnect to other lives and larger phenomena, they are not ends in and of themselves.

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography 365

Lillian Wineman had a position, a social location, a point of view. Becauseher father was a prominent businessman, she had disposable income to purchaseIndian finery. Had I begun this discussion from the vantage point of my Norwegiangreat-grandmother, the story would have unfolded in a different way, without thesame 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 theDakota woman who made the beadwork, my account of the same series of eventswould 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 inmany ways approximates map making during a voyage of discovery. My over-arching intention is to construct a grand map of largely uncharted relationships.This task, impossible without the guidance of local knowers and rich sources ofevidence, nonetheless is one made more possible through the use of biography.The biography is not just about plotting a particular location, but situating a lifewithin 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 feedbackon several earlier drafts of this article. In addition I want to acknowledge the astute editorial eyeof Rosanna Hertz, who saw the article in the talk and worked with me to develop and clarify myargument.

2. The tribe changed the name of the reservation to the Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation, in themid-1990s. To respect their efforts to make the contemporary English more consonant with itsDakota meaning, I will refer to the reservation as the Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation, evenwhen 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 theiroriginal 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 cannotunderstand Indian history without understanding the history of the U.S. government policies towardIndians regarding their language, culture, and economy. "Over the past century, the condition ofIndian participation in the economy, either as land-owners, wage-laborers, or entrepreneurs havebeen 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.

Hansen366

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, Commissionerof 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 NewEngland. 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 LosAngeles: University of California Press.. (1995). 'No kisses is like youres': an erotic friendship between African-American women duringthe 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: Min-

newaukan History Book Committee.O'Brien, J. (1999). Social prisms: Reflections on everyday myths and paradoxes. Thousand Oaks, CA:

Pine Forge Press.

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography 367

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). ThousandOaks, CA: Sage.

Rikoon, J.S. (Ed.), (1995). Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish homesteader on the Northern Plains. Bloom-ington, 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, TheaterArts 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 andcrafts." In P. Albers & B. Medicine (Eds.), The hidden /ia//(pp.l01-121). NewYork: UniversityPress of America.. (1994). North Dakota Indians: An introduction, second edition. Dubuque, IO: Kendall/HuntPublishing.

Schulte, J. (1990). 'Proving up and moving up': Jewish homesteading activity in North Dakota, 1900-1920. Great Plains Quarterly, 10, 228-244.

Shoemaker, N. (Ed.), (1995). Negotiators of change: Historical perspectives on Native Americanwomen. New York: Routledge.

Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston: NortheasternUniversity Press.

Snyder, E. E. (1985). The Chautauqua movement in popular culture: a sociological analysis. Journalof 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.

368 Hansen