About the Griffith Collection

Griffith’s collection consists of 58 masks: 53 pascola masks and 5 capakóbam masks from the Middle Río Yaqui from the Névome Indians. The vast majority of the masks in the collections were worn by pascola dancers in ceremonies. A few were commissioned from the carver by Griffith.

Most were collected at the end of the 1960s. Not all are from the Río Mayo area, however. Six pascola masks originated from the Mayos of the Río Fuerte region in Sinaloa and two from the Yoeme communities of Vicam Switch and Potam (Table 1; see Fig. 2.1 and 3.1). In addition he also recorded mask makers in those areas (Table 2). In 2005, James S. Griffith donated this collection to the Arizona State Museum.

Table # 1: Communities visited by Griffith