Stewart Culin - World of Games

World of Games

Active in several ethnographic organizations during the late 1880s, Culin became involved with the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago during 1893. As an assistant curator, Culin organized several game-related exhibitions. In addition, 1891 saw the publication of two papers. The first treated the street games of city boys, the second dealt with Chinese gambling games, providing explanations on Fan-Tan and Pak Kop Pin. At the World Exposition, Culin met Frank Hamilton Cushing. The two became friends and endeavored to create the first cumulative documentation on the world's games.

In 1892 Culin became Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Paleontology. Married on March 18, 1893 to Helen Bunker, Culin published on the games exhibit at the 1891 Chicago exposition. In 1899 he became curator at the Free Museum of Science and Arts in Philadelphia on American and general ethnology.

Korean Games, with comparisons to those of other Asian cultures, were the topic of Culin's first book, published in 1895. This work was inspired by Cushing, then of the Bureau of American Ethnology of Washington. Culin became interested in chess and card games and published a paper on the topic in 1886. He worked with Cushing on an article called Arrow games and their variants in America and the Orient. When Cushing became ill, Culin continued the work and eventually published three inter-related papers: American Indian Games (1898), Hawaiian Games (1899) and Philippine Games (1900). After Cushing's death in 1900, Culin published a revised version of American Indian Games in 1903.