'A mask from a native American tribe in Arizona has fetched 160,000 euros at auction in Paris, more than three times the pre-sale estimate.
Friday's auction of 70 masks fetched some 930,000 euros after a legal challenge to stop the sale failed.
Lawyers for the Hopi tribe had asked for the auction to be cancelled on the grounds that the masks must have been stolen from the tribe.
It considers them sacred and blessed with divine spirits.
Auctioneers, however, say the masks had been bought and sold in the past and were legally acquired.
They said blocking the sale would have implications for the trade of indigenous art and could potentially force French museums to hand back collections they have bought.
'Criminal gesture'
The masks - mysterious looking faces fashioned from wood, leather, horse hair and feathers, and painted in a vivid array of colours - are spiritual artefacts thought to have been taken from a reservation in northern Arizona in the 1930s and 40s.
To Hopi Indians they are sacred - tools through which the living can communicate with the spirits of the dead.
The sale of sacred Indian artefacts has been outlawed in the United States since 1990 - but the law does not extend to sales overseas.
Protesters repeatedly disrupted Friday's auction. As the Mother Crow mask was sold, one protester shouted: "These are sacred things!"
One mask was bought by an association to give back to the Hopis, said the Drouot auction house.
One buyer who acquired four masks said he was delighted to be adding to his collection of Hopi artefacts.
"One day I might give some back," the collector, who declined to be identified, told Reuters news agency.
"But if it had not been for collectors in the 19th Century who contributed to the field of ethnology, there would very little knowledge of the Hopi."
Two museums in Arizona and members of the Hopi tribe had demanded the sale be called off.
The actor Robert Redford has also been supporting the 18,000-strong Hopi tribe and describes himself as their "close friend".
Before the court ruling, he wrote that the masks "belong to the Hopi and the Hopi alone".
"To auction these would be, in my opinion, a sacrilege - a criminal gesture that contains grave moral repercussions," he said. '

hau Thermlin, I believe the Hopi are VERY knowledgeable about themselves and do not in any way need europeans defining what is "known" and not "known."

Tonight on the BBC News the auctioneer proclaimed in no uncertain words that the mask were no longer sacred; that they could and would be sold to the highest bidder. The deal was a done thing and the sales were made. Guy must be pretty powerful if he can remove the sacredness from the mask. Make a great pope. The problem is if they admit one artifact is sacred they must then examine the wealth of the 'royal' families and the catholic church and admit that much of their wealth, and the way in which it was ruthlessly stolen, came from the First Peoples.

I would respect the sacredness of the masks and other sacred belongings. http://mysteryandhistory.blogspot.com/2 ... urses.html