Born about 1835, Club Man was the older brother of Little Killer and a brother-in-law of Crazy Horse.(1) He was apparently also related to the famous Man Afraid of His Horse’s family.(2) Nothing is known of his early years except that he married Crazy Horse’s older sister sometime before 1869.

When the Great Sioux War of 1876-77 broke out, he was living with his family among the northern bands, probably with the Hunkpatila Tiyospaye of the Oglala Lakota. He fought at the Battle of the Rosebud and at the Little Bighorn where he reportedly “took an active part.”(3) He probably also participated in the fighting at Slim Buttes later that fall and at the Battle of Wolf Mountains against General Miles’ troops in January 1877.

Club Man surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency with Crazy Horse in May 1877.(4) Shortly afterward, he enlisted with Crazy Horse, He Dog and other prominent northern men in Lieutenant William Philo Clark’s Indian Scouts and that summer, as part of a detachment of Indian Scouts, was sent to accompany General Phil Sheridan’s party to the scene of the Little Bighorn. A correspondent from the Chicago Tribune walked the battlefield with Club Man on July 21, learning from him some of the details of the fight.(5) He remained in the Indian Scouts through three enlistments and was mustered out for the final time on Dec. 31, 1877 as a corporal.(6)

Club Man and his family were among the northern Oglala who fled from the Red Cloud Agency in the winter of 1877-78, eventually joining Sitting Bull in Canada. He surrendered three years later, probably with Low Dog at Fort Buford in April 1881. All of the northern Lakota at Forts Buford and Keogh were transferred to Fort Yates and the nearby Standing Rock Agency that summer where Club Man is recorded in the Sitting Bull Surrender Census with his wife, a son named Eagle Horse and two daughters: Recognizing Horse and Wounded Twice. Club Man’s brother Little Killer is listed as the next family in the census.(7) Club Man’s name also appears in the famous Big Road Roster as a member of Low Dog’s band.(8) By December 1881, he and his family had joined Iron Crow’s band of Oglala.(9)

All of the Oglala at Standing Rock, including Club Man, were transferred to the Pine Ridge Agency in the spring 1882.(10) There is a gap in the records at Pine Ridge for the next four years. By the time that the first official Pine Ridge Agency census was taken in 1886, Club Man was gone, presumably having died sometime between 1882 and 1886. His wife, apparently now giving her name as Walks in the House, and their three children however are listed.(11) Club Man’s family lived in the White Clay District as part of Little Hawk’s group within the larger Tapisleca or Melt Band at least up through 1888.(12) No further record of the family could be found.(13)
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1. Little Killer Interview with Eleanor Hinman, July 12, 1930, Hinman Papers, Nebraska State Historical Society (published in: “Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse: Interviews Given to Eleanor H. Hinman,” Nebraska History vol. 57 no. 1 (Spring 1976) pp. 42-43). Little Killer noted that Club Man “had married Crazy Horse’s older sister. He had eight children, but none of them lived long enough to get allotments from the government… Crazy Horse’s sister and her children all died before 1901.”

2. He Dog later recalled that Club Man and Man Afraid of His Horses were closely related, that they “called each other brothers.” He Dog Interview with Mari Sandoz, June 30, 1931, Sandoz Collection, University of Nebraska (published in Richard G. Hardorff, The Death of Crazy Horse: A Tragic Episode in Lakota History, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001) pp. 119-120. Hardorff incorrectly identifies Club Man as a Minneconjou.

3. Chicago Tribune; reprinted New York Times, Aug. 4, 1877.

4. Thomas R. Buecker and R. Eli Paul (eds.), The Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society) p. 162. His name is translated here as War Club. His younger brother Little Killer is probably the man listed as Owns Arrow in the same lodge.

5. Chicago Tribune, loc cit.

6. Register of Enlistments, Indian Scouts (microcopy 233 roll 70), enlistments W486, 514. 541. Muster Rolls, Indian Scouts, National Archives.

7. Sitting Bull Surrender Census, 1881, family sheet #523, Standing Rock Reservation, National Archives Regional Branch, Kansas City. His wife’s name is given in Lakota as Mni okin ci win which the enumerator was not able to translate fully, listing her as “Water -------”. Her name may have been Asks for Water or Water Beggar.

8. Big Road Roster, manuscript 2372, Garrick Mallery Collection, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (published in: Mallery, “On the Pictographs of the North American Indians,” Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1886), p. 174-175).

9. Annuity List, Dec. 1881, Standing Rock Agency, National Archives Regional Branch, Kansas City.

10. Pine Ridge Agency ration list, 1879-82, Oglala Lakota College Archives, Kyle, South Dakota.

11. Pine Ridge Agency census, 1886:414; 1887:2492; 1888:4228, Records of the Office of Indian Affairs (RG75), National Archives.

12. Club Man’s wife disappears by the time of the 1890 census and one daughter, Shot Twice, is listed with the family of Lone Eagle. Pine Ridge Agency census, 1890:850, loc. cit. The family of Eagle Horse is shown as part of Little Hawk’s group in an undated record. Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne Consolidation list, probably late 1880s, Pine Ridge Reservation records, National Archives Regional Branch, Kansas City.

13. An Oglala woman named Mrs. Eagle Horse was interviewed by Walter Camp who said that her mother was Crazy Horse’s sister. She may have been one of Club Man’s two daughters or possibly even the wife of Club Man’s son. Camp Papers, Box 4, Folder 8 (transcript p. 271), University of Indiana Library.

— Ephriam Dickson