This charming small reliquary figure was presented to a French administrator in 1944 by a chief of the Obamba in a village of the Franceville subdivison of eastern Gabon. He wrote in a diary Il était déjà très ancien à l'époque, il doit avoir une centaine d'années. Par sa petite taille, il n'est pas courant. Les masques funéraires comme celui-ci étaient généralement beaucoup plus grands.
His son remembers that his father often referred to the little house, la petite maison, where he found the reliquary with its basket of bones before it, in a village on his administrative rounds

The Chaffins (1980) classify this type of reliquary in their Group 6, but the present figure is unusual in being smaller than any they illustrate (pp. 113/131). They observe: This group is one of the most beautiful of Kota art. The majority of these sculptures are very old, proof of which can be found in the thickness of the piece, the patina of the wood and the metal plates, and, above all, in the presence of archaic characteristics. (p.112). All these characteristics are found in the present figure, and the age is confirmed by the wear on the thin metal plates.