96 MASKS AND LABRETS. 



:i\ .'i sion, or unclean, has evidently, in connection with other ethnic facts, 

 a certain bearing or weight. 



The most remarkable and interesting instance of this practice known 

 to anthropologists is that of the human mask now in the Christy collec- 

 tion, forming part of the British Museum. This is believed to have 

 been brought to Spain shortly after the Spanish conquest and formed 

 part of several collections, being at last secured by Mr. Henry Christy. 



In this specimen the eyeballs are replaced by polished hemispheres 

 of pyrites ; the nasal septum masked by pieces of shell, and a mosaic of 

 small bits of dark obsidian and green turquoise or chalchihuitl, inlaid 

 in broad bands across the face. The part of the skull behind the ears 

 is cut away, so as to admit of placing this human mask over the face of 

 an idol, where it was fasteued by leather thongs, which still remain 

 attached to it. It was elegantly figured in colors by Waldeck in Bras- 

 seur de Bourbourg's Monuments Auciens du Mexique, plate 43, p. viii. 1 

 It was then in the Hertz collection. 



The following account of its use is given by Sahaguu, 2 as quoted by 

 Bourbourg : 



Au mois Izcalli on fabriquant un mannequin du Dieu du fen Xiuhteuctli » « * 

 on lui mettait un masque en mosa'iqno tout travaiil<5 du turquoises avec quelques 

 bandes de pi- ires verte appelee' chalchnihuitl traversaut la visage ; ce masque 6tait 

 fort beau et reeplendissant. 



This mask, therefore, belonged to the third type, and might properly 

 he classed near the stone maskoids, of which Mexico has produced so 

 many. 3 (Cf. Ant. Mex., 1st exp. Du Paix, pi. xv, f. 16.) 



Further north I have come upon no distinct record of such a practice, 4 

 tliim^kMeares and some others represent Callicum and Maquinna. chiefs, 

 at Nutka and vicinity, as preserving the skulls of their enemies, while 



1 It is also represented by a cut derived from Waldeck by Squier In his article on 

 chalchibuitls from Mexico and Central America, Ann. Lye. Nat. Hist., N. Y., 1869; 

 and in colors by Brocklehurst in his recent work on Mexico. 



: Hist. Gen. de la Cosas deNueva Espaiia, ii, chap, xxxvii. 



3 The Museum Godeffroy has received from New Britain a mask so small and of 

 such a character that Schmeltz supposes it to have been intended to be placed over 

 the face of one of their idols (1. c., p. 48o). 



4 Iu 1787 Dixon observed that the Tlinkit of Yakutat Bay in disposing of the dead 

 separated the heads from the bodies, preserving the bodies in a sort of chest above 

 ground (as do the Northern Innuit on the Yukon River at thepresant day), with a 

 frame of poles over it. The head was separately preserved in a carved and orna- 

 mented box painted in various colors and placed on the framework about the chest. 

 Iu Norfolk Sound, now known as Sitka Sound, one of his party observing a cave in 

 the hillside, eutered it and found one of these boxes containiuga head which seemed 

 to have been newly placed there. Nothing is said of any body or chest as being in 

 the cave. (See Dixon's Voyage around the World, London. 1789, pp. 175, 181.) 



Among the Tlinkit of Sitka, according to Lisianski, in 1805, bodies of the dead were 

 burned, but of bodies of those who fell in war the head was preserved and placed in 

 a separate wooden box from that in which the ashes and bones were placed. (Lisian- 

 ski, 1. c, p. -241.) 



