These masks are painted in colours: blue, green, white, black, pink, red, yellow, brown, purple and grey, and are adorned with plumes and beads. All have sex, masculine or feminine, which is not determined by the beard. In graphic representations the round heads are masculine and the square, feminine. The masks are collected by a head man at his house before each dance and decorated for the occasion. After the dances they are dismantled and taken, each to its owner's home where they are kept in a back room tied in a cloth. The same mask may be used in different dances, painted and adorned in accordance with their requirements. Masks are regarded as sacred and the spirit of the divinity they represent is thought to reside in them. Altars formed of them set in a row are sprinkled with sacred meal. Men invoked their masks, thanking them for services rendered. The wearer of the mask believes he is transformed into the mythic creature it represents. When he removes it he feels obliged to wash and purify himself. Among the Hopi a ceremony is performed to make this removal effective, through fear that the spirit may remain and disturb its possessor.
Masks and masked dances were articles of traffic between individuals and different Indian tribes. The Yeibichai dance of the Navajo is closely inter-related to the shalako dance of the Zuni Indians in which tall giants appear. In the shalako, the person ators carry the masks upon poles, their heads and bodies being covered with a huge crinoline, painted to simulate feathers, through which holes are cut for their eyes. The masks used by the Navajo in the Yeibichai, as the night chant is called, are copies of the cylinder and face masks of the Pueblos, but are made of soft buckskin, great care being taken in their manu facture which is attended with elaborate ceremonies. Among the Pueblo Indians who have remained more or less under Christian influences, their old masked ceremonies are celebrated in a much modified form on the days of Christian church festivals and such is the custom generally among the Indian tribes in Mexico, who for the most part are Catholics.
No traces of masks are found among the remains in the Cliff Dwellings and it may be presumed that their existence among the Pueblos dates from a comparatively recent time and that they were introduced from old Mexico, their original source, at or about the time of the conquest. The gods they represent were originally bird-tree-gods, and the masks sections of trees. Made now of leather they were originally of hollow wood. Bird-tree gods, personifications of the Four Directions, play a dominant part in the mythology of the native people of Mexico and Central America.
Among the tribes of the north-west coast two kinds of masks are distinguished : dancing masks and masks attached to house fronts and heraldic columns. All masks of the latter kind are clan masks, usually three to five feet high, and have reference to the crest of the house or post owner. The dancing masks are those used at the Potlatch, the festival at which property is given away, and the masks of the mimical performances in winter when dances representing the traditions of the clan are acted. Some have human and others animal faces, bear, wolf, dog, beaver, crane, puffin and killer whale, represented in their mythology. They are commonly made of cedar wood, many are elaborately carved.
Carved wooden masks survive in use among Iroquois Indians in New York State and in Ontario, Canada, and archaeological remains indicate their use among the Indians of the eastern United States. Being perishable, the older masks of the aboriginal inhabitants of America have for the most part disappeared, but a suggestion that they may have existed widely is found in the carved and painted wooden masks discovered by Cushing at Marco. Florida.
Masks are less common among the South American Indians than in North America, although archaeological remains indicate that they had an important part in the old culture of Ecuador and Peru. Masks are used by the tribes of Guiana and on the Amazon, and in Tierra del Fuego bark and seal hide dance masks repre senting fish, suggesting the New Mexican Pueblo Indian masks, are used by the Yaghan. Actual masks are extremely rare among Peruvian remains, although terra cotta masks have been found in graves and Gigilioli reports two masks made from the facial portion of human skulls as having been discovered in an ancient cemetery near Lima. These objects, which appear to be true masks and used as such, are analogous to the skull masks of New Britain, the only other locality outside of ancient Mexico in which such masks are known to be employed.
It was the custom of certain of the old Peruvians like the ancient Egyptians to place above or bef ore the envelopes of their dead, destined to a natural and not an artificial mummification, a rough image of the deceased when living. This was a wooden face, fixed with a peg on the upper part of the envelope in which the corpse was bound up, usually painted and adorned with a wig of human hair and a more or less complicated head-dress. (See