Two museums in Arizona and members of the Hopi tribe had demanded the sale be called off.
Before the court ruling, he wrote that the masks "belong to the Hopi and the Hopi alone".
One buyer who acquired four masks said he was delighted to be adding to his collection of Hopi artefacts.
The actor Robert Redford has also been supporting the 18, 000-strong Hopi tribe and describes himself as their "close friend".
To Hopi Indians they are sacred - tools through which the living can communicate with the spirits of the dead.
Two other potential producers in the region are the Hopi Indian tribe and HNZ, a privately held entity controlled by Hunt Oil of Dallas, Texas.
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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.
Smack dab in the middle of Indian Country, it was founded in 1872 by Mormons who converted the Hopi leader for whom the Painted Desert town is named.
For instance, a public-private collaboration initiated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago with Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago and the City of Chicago produced the Home Ownership Preservation Initiative (HOPI), which began in 2003.
Proponents of the new measure say that the cost of living in Santa Fe is a fifth above the national average (blame all those pastel Tex-Mex bars and overpriced Hopi sofa-throws), but wages are 18% below it.
In the ensuing three years, the HOPI program counseled more than 4, 000 people, prevented 1, 300 foreclosures, and reclaimed 300 buildings.2 HOPI has also been a model for foreclosure prevention programs now operating around the country, including in Baltimore and Atlanta and in Ohio.
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