Like the game of dice or platter it was essentially a house game, and like platter it is rarely mentioned by writers who describe the habits of Indians in the south. Lawson describes it, but in slightly modified form, as follows: "Indian Cards. Their chiefest game is a sort of Arithmetick, which is managed by a parcel of small split reeds, the thickness of a small Bent; these are made very nicely, so that they part, and are tractable in their hands. They are fifty-one in number, their length about seven inches; when they play, they throw part of them to their antagonist; the art is, to discover, upon sight, how many you have, and what you throw to him that plays with you. Some are so expert at their numbers, that they will tell ten times together, what they throw out of their hands. Although the whole play is carried on with the quickest motion it is possible to use, yet some are so expert at this Game, as to win great Indian Estates by this Play. A good set of these reeds, fit to play withal are valued and sold for a dressed doe-skin." A. W. Chase [Footnote: Overland Monthly, Vol. II, p. 433. Dorsey found a survival of the game in use among the Omahas. He called it "stick counting." Third Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, p. 338.] speaks of "native games of cards among the Coquelles and Makneatanas, the pasteboards being bundles of sticks." He furnishes no description of the games, but uses the same phrase which was applied by Lawson in North Carolina and by Boucher in Canada. Frank H. Cushing [Footnote: The Century, Vol. XXVI, p. 38. My Adventures in Zuni.] speaks of a game of "Cane-cards" among the Zuni which he says "would grace the most civilized society with a refined source of amusement." He was not able fully to comprehend it. In the list of games, there is none of which we have any detailed account, which compares with straws as played by the northern tribes, in elaborateness of construction. The unfortunate confusion which prevails throughout Perrot's description of the method of counting, and the way in which the point was shirked by all other writers on the subject, prevents any attempt at analysis. So far as we can see, the rules were arbitrary and not based upon any calculations of the laws of chance. If some other detailed account of the game should be discovered it would be interesting to follow up this question and ascertain how far the different combinations which affected the counts were based upon a theory of probabilities and how far they were arbitrary.