392 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



This carving was done in a room of the community center adjacent 

 to that in which the masks are hung. The greater part of it was 

 accompKshed during an evening session of about 4 hours, an hour on 

 the following morning being sufficient to complete the job. He made 

 no sketches before he started nor were there any masks or pictures of 

 masks in the room to which he could refer as models. 



The only wood which Thomas had on hand and which he thought 

 suitable for his purpose was a small cylindrical piece of cedar. He 

 began by scraping the bark off the outside with a large knife, then 

 placed the piece on a larger block and split it down the center, using 

 his knife as he would a chisel by pounding on the top of it with a ham- 

 mer. Choosing one of the halves, he did some more scraping on the 

 rounded side, changed his knife for a smaller one and made two diag- 

 onal cuts across the top for the eyebrows, commenting that masks 

 needed all kinds of knives, big blades and little blades. "This one 

 (mask), I don't really know how it's going to look. It just keeps on 

 forming." His wife, who was present at the time, said, "Make a funny 

 one." 



Using the point of his knife, he traced some lines on the wood, 

 seemingly trying out various possibilities, and indeed did remark, 

 "This helps me plan the features." He then dug two little holes below 

 the brows, held the piece away from him to scrutinize it, and made a 

 cut near the bottom for the mouth. Taking up the larger knife again, 

 he sliced off the lower edges to form the chin. Another cut below the 

 first gave him the position of the lips and he began to dig between and 

 around them, saying as he did so that if he had been making a large 

 mask, he would have started using chisels at this stage of the work. 

 Before he had gotten very far with the mouth, however, he returned to 

 the eyebrows, cutting in above and below them so that they stood out 

 from the face. "I switch all over when I work. If I were to work on 

 just one feature it might spoU." He also made the comment, which he 

 repeated several times later on, that this mask was completely 

 different from any he had previously carved or had ever seen. "I 

 never made one like this before. It forms as I make it. I don't need 

 any designs; it's right in my head." 



In rounding off the forehead, Thomas left a crestlike projection in 

 the center which joined the eyebrows and became the top of the nose. 

 Deep cuts around the nose and eyes brought them into relief and 

 formed the cheekbones. He continued to work on these features for 

 some time, and then went back to the chin, doing some slicing on the 

 sides to make it narrower and taking a large triangular piece off the 

 back which caused it to jut forward. This last operation was performed 

 with a saw on the log of wood he was using as a work bench. For the 



