 Sierra Leonean missionaries, according to Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba, and John Taylor, an Igbo, descendants of repatriated slaves, were referred to as "oyibo ojii" () or "native foreigners" by the people of Onitsha in the late 19th century.Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, claimed in his 1789 narrative that the people in "Essaka", Igboland, where he claimed to be from, had used the term "Oye-Eboe" in reference to "red men living at a distance" which may possibly be an earlier version of "oyibo".Equiano's use of "Oye-Eboe", however, was in reference to other Africans and not white men.