[Jim McDougall]

It is excellent to see an American Indian weapon presented here, and done well with supporting evidence of provenanced items using similar crimson material as seen in some of the decoration of this war club.
The color red was significant among various tribes and along with other colors seemed to have similar meanings pertaining to both war and peaceful circumstances.
According to James Mooney, "History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees" (1900), red was the color of the war club. While this club is noted as Oglala Sioux, naturally the general meanings and types of weapons were widely diffused through many tribes.

Colin F. Taylor ("Native American Weapons", 2001, p.16) describes a heavy round headed stone entirely covered with rawhide or buckskin which was in turn sewn around the wooden handle. It left 2" of rawhide between the handle and stone head free. Apparantly this free moving stone dealt a lethal blow. These were common on the plains and Southwest, with suggestions they originated west of the Rockies.

The idea of origin to the west seems supported by example #32, p.180 ("The American Indian", A. Hyatt Verrill, N.Y. 1927) which is one of these round stone types attached in what appears this manner to a haft, and classified as Apache.

Sitting Bull, the famed chief, was Oglala, and in an article by Harry H. Anderson, an official of the South Dakota Historical Society, one of his war clubs is described. In "The War Club of Sitting Bull the Oglala" (Nebraska History 42, 1961, p. 55-62) a three bladed 'gunstock club' used by him is described and illustrated in photos of c. 1874. In the grouping of weapons presumably Oglala and with Sitting Bull's is one of these round stone, leather covered war clubs. It appears that decoration at the end of the haft are feathers, much like in the line illustration of the Apache example (Verrill, op.cit. ).
While the stone head on these as well as in Taylors description suggest the head is round, naturally these shapes vary widely, and elliptical as this example within the expected range.

Since the bladed so called 'gunstock' type clubs seem to have come into use by the Plains tribes in 1860s according to Anderson, it would seem that these stone head types were somewhat supplanted but clearly still in use by 1870s.

The red color of the material seems corroborated to the provenanced items of mid 19th c. and according to what is noted on clubs of this form it would seem quite plausible that it is indeed Oglala as noted and probably of the first half of the 19thc.