The Mossi are today the largest single group living in Burkina Faso. They originated from horsemen who made their way north from present day Ghana during the 1500’s. Mossi are renowned for their masquerades and the use of large superbly sculpted and brightly painted masks and colorful costumes. Mossi biiga dolls are so called because the Mossi word for these figures, biiga, simply means "child." These simple carved forms are a study in variations on a theme developed around an economy of parts, a cylinder representing an armless torso, breasts, a neck of variable length, body scarification, and a head with detail largely given to the coiffure. A magnificently wide array of styles burgeons from this limited vocabulary. Dolls served on two levels. The first, as is true for dolls the world over, are toys for girls, which, while playthings, are also obvious teaching tools. A doll may also serve an adult as a surrogate baby for a childless, would-be mother. Caring for the doll as she would her own baby, feeding it, carrying it on a cloth wrap when going to market, she believes that a sympathetic magic will occur. If the woman conceives and a baby is born, the doll receives the first drops of milk from the mother. The doll is then carefully tucked away, a cherished object to be passed along to the next generation.