87-88-89 English Court Cards with French pips. About 1840.
90-91-92 German Cards, showing Six of Acorns, Six of Leaves, and Six of Hearts.
93-94 Chinese Cards showing Money and Rod emblems.
The Alaskans also have a game somewhat like the Mora of the Egyptians and the Italians, only it is the value of the sticks or the stripes painted on them that must be guessed.
One step higher are the sticks used by the Hidah Indians, the natives of a little group of islands in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of North America. These sticks show the totem marks of the tribes or families, such as the Bear, the Tortoise, etc. They are clearly derived from arrows, and sometimes have notched ends, and are still used for divination, although also for games. Taken with those from Alaska, they are the most primitive packs known.
The next step forward is from the wooden shafts or rods to thin slips of yellow oiled paper, narrow and long, that belong to the Koreans. The use of these “cards” is still the same, and the close resemblance to the North American packs is marked, showing that all came from a common source. These Korean cards serve as a link connecting the primitive arrow or rod with the step that follows, from which come the Chinese gambling tools.
The Korean cards are made of strips of paper about eight inches long by three-quarters of an inch wide. They are uniformly decorated on the reverse side with a feather, which Mr. Culin considers important as attaching the cards to the original winged shaft. There are eighty cards in the pack, divided into eight suits of ten cards each, numbered from one to nine with numerals peculiar to these cards, which, like the device on the other side, come from arrow feathers. The suit marks correspond to the totemic emblems of the Koreans.
These cards are a vital bridge between the primitive traps for divination and the more enlightened devices of the canny Egyptian priests, for it was through the use of strips of bamboo, simple straws, or the arrows of the period that the priests first transmitted the wishes of the gods to mankind. But whether the cult of arrows originated in Egypt and travelled from that centre both east and west, being modified, simplified, or elaborated by every nation through which it passed, or whether it started on the Pacific Ocean, to sweep across Asia to Africa and Europe, has not been made clear.
It is more than probable that the simple art of divining through the fall of arrows is due to the primitive tribes of Asia, and certainly in Exodus, Numbers, and others of the books of Moses, there are many records of the direct command of the Almighty to his people to carry out his wishes through using the “rods,” or to consult his orders through occult means to be revealed by the rods. These are authentic records on the subject, and are supported by the tablets found at Babylonia, so we may suppose that “the arrows of divination” spread gradually from this Asiatic centre, becoming altered from time to time, until in many places all traces of the original purpose was lost, and the art of consulting the wishes of the gods through them lapsed into the pleasure of gambling.
The Korean name for their pack of cards is Htou-Tjyen, signifying “Fighting Arrows,” according to Mr. Culin in “Korean Games” (page 128). “The suits,” he says, “represent Man, Fish, Crow, Pheasant, Antelope, Star, Rabbit, and Horse, the name of the card being written on it in Chinese characters in some packs. Six Generals, or Court cards, representing the heads or the chiefs of the different families, and two entirely blank cards, or Jokers, complete the set.”