While on Tongatapu, James Cook remarked on the headrest: “Their whole furniture consists of … small wooden stools, which serve them for pillows ….”
The first opportunity to acquire such a headrest in Tonga arrived when Cook’s scientific companions during the second voyage, Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg, visited the island of 'Eua on October 2, 1773. Georg Forster noted in his chronicle “Voyage around the World”: “Those little stools, which serve as pillows for the head, were much more frequent here than at Taheitee;….”
He also described the raw material, casuarina wood, also known to thesailors as “…club wood, which had this name from supplying all the islanders in the South Sea with weapons.”In June 1774, Georg Forster noticed the same headrests on the northern Tongan island of Nomuka: “Those narrow little stools, on which the Taheitians rest the head, are extremely frequent here, and serve the same purpose.”
It is, therefore, possible that the two headrests in the Herrnhut collection come from 'Eua or from the island of Nomuka. However, it is also possible that Cook’s escort officer James Burney or another passenger collected or received the headrests on Cook’s second or third voyage to Tongatapu or Lifuka in the Ha'apai group.
The Polynesian Mai, who was the first Pacific Islander to visit London on Cook’s second expedition and who returned to the Society Island of Huahine on Cook’s third voyage, may also have received or exchanged such a headrest during his two stays in Tonga.