traditions. Igbo origin hypothesis Despite its associations with a number of Akan slaves and rebellions, the origin of Obeah has been criticised by several writers who hold that an Igbo origin is more likely. According to W. E. B. Du Bois Institute database, he traces Obeah to the Dibia or Obia () traditions of the Igbo people. Specialists in Obia (also spelled Obea) were known as Ndi Obia () and practised the same activities as the Obeah men and women of the Caribbean like predicting the future and manufacturing charms. Among the Igbo there were oracles known as Obiạ which were said to be able to talk. Parts of the Caribbean where Obeah was most active imported a large number of its slaves from the Igbo-dominated Bight of Biafra. This interpretation is also favored by Kenneth Bilby, arguing that “dibia’ connotes a neutral “master of knowledge and wisdom.” Efik origin hypothesis In another hypothesis, the Efik language is the root of Obeah where the word obeah comes from the Efik ubio meaning 'a bad omen'. Melville Herskovits endorsed a different Efik origin, arguing that obeah was a corruption of an Efik word for “doctor” or the corruption of the Bahumono word for "native doctor". Beginnings The earliest known mention of Obeah comes from Barbados in 1710 from letters written by Thomas Walduck. He writes in part, that an Obia Negro can torment another by sending uncountable pains in different parts of their Body, lameness, madness, loss of speech, lose the use of all their limbs without any pain. The term 'Obeah' is first found in documents from the early 18th century, as in its connection to Nanny of the Maroons. Colonial sources referred to the spiritual powers attributed to her in a number of derogatory ways, ranging from referring to her as “the rebel’s old obeah woman” to characterizing her as “unsexed” and more bloodthirsty than Maroon men. Maroon oral traditions discuss her feats of science in rich detail. She is said to have used her obeah powers to kill British soldiers in Nanny's Pot, a boiling pot without a flame below it that soldiers would lean into and fall in, to quickly grow food for her starving forces, and to catch British bullets and either fire them back or attack the soldiers with a machete. The Jamaican Assembly passed a number of draconian laws to regulate the slaves in