Early Plains Rawhide-Covered Stone Head War Club, 26.5"L

Native American, Plains, ca. late 19th–mid-20th century CE. A war club with a round stone head on a straight wooden handle, covered entirely in a single piece of hide, likely rawhide. The hide wraps all the way around the stone and runs the full length of the handle, so the head and shaft read as one continuous form. It was probably applied wet and left to shrink as it dried, pulling tight and locking the stone to the wood without separate binding. A stitched seam runs along one side of the handle and branches at the top to close the casing over the head. The hide has darkened to a mottled chocolate and tan, and the stiff, rumpled skin over the stone gives the head a rough, knobby surface. A heavy stone on a handle, built to strike with force, in its simplest form. Stone-headed clubs were among the most common weapons on the Great Plains. Over the same broad region they took two main forms. In the "slungshot" type, the stone sits loosely in a hide pouch on a short flexible neck, so it swings like a flail. In the fixed-head type, seen here, the stone is held firmly against the end of the shaft by a tight hide casing. Both forms depended on rawhide. Green hide sewn over stone and wood shrinks hard as it dries and binds the parts together more tightly than lashing alone could. By the late nineteenth century the Plains peoples had been confined to reservations, and these clubs had largely stopped being used in battle. Clubs like this were still made and carried as signs of a warrior's standing, in dances and parades, and in honoring ceremonies. Many were also made for sale to the growing number of outside collectors. The form stayed the same through these years, so a plain, undecorated club like this is hard to assign to a single nation without documentation. It still shows the basic construction found across the Plains tradition. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 205964

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