Few records survive of interpreter Mathieu Da Costa

Mathieu Da Costa is often called the first Black person known to have visited Canada, yet the surviving records place him in Amsterdam, Rouen and Le Havre and say little about what he did on this side of the Atlantic.

The Canadian Encyclopedia says historians consider him the first known Black visitor to Canada, probably travelling with Pierre Dugua de Mons and Samuel de Champlain. It also says his birth and death dates and places are unknown, and that his name appears in documents as Mateus Da Costa, Mathieu de Coste and Matheus de Cost.

The only verifiable fact about him, according to the encyclopedia, comes from a document placing him in Holland in February or March 1607. The article says the Dutch likely kidnapped him from the French. That fits a larger dispute: Jean Ralluau, secretary to de Mons, travelled to Amsterdam that year to contest the Dutch seizure of goods from two of de Mons’s ships at Tadoussac.

In May 1608, back in Amsterdam, Da Costa signed a three-year service contract with Nicolas de Bauquemare, a Rouen merchant. The contract was to begin on Jan. 1, 1609, and named him as interpreter for “voyages to Canada, Acadia and elsewhere,” the encyclopedia said. The document matters because it shows that a merchant was prepared to pay for his language skills in the fur trade.

What those skills were is itself a matter of inference. The encyclopedia says historians think he may have used a Basque-based pidgin for trade with Indigenous peoples, and that the Mi’kmaq and Innu understood that trade language.

The paper trail then turns difficult. He was in Rouen in the spring of 1609. De Bauquemare terminated the contract on June 15, 1609, citing an alleged breach of its terms. In December 1609, de Bauquemare had him jailed in Le Havre and transferred the contract to de Mons. The reason is not known, though the document refers to an act of “insolence.”

On Dec. 11, 1609, a proxy for de Mons sought his release. The encyclopedia says that suggests he was freed, and notes that this is an inference rather than a recorded outcome.

After that, the documentary trail goes quiet. Lawsuits between de Mons and de Bauquemare that ran from 1609 to 1619 mention Da Costa, the encyclopedia said, but the records do not say what became of him. Any later voyage, possibly as late as 1617, is speculation.

That leaves the central question open. Whether Da Costa ever reached Canada, and if so when and with whom, is not settled by the surviving records. The Canadian Encyclopedia says some historians doubt he was ever here. Wikipedia’s summary of the scholarship, which relies on secondary works, likewise calls a 1609 visit to Canada “open to question.” Champlain is not documented as having recorded him.

His commemoration has nonetheless been considerable. The Mathieu Da Costa Challenge, a creative writing and art contest for young people, ran from 1996 to 2011 under Canadian Heritage. A plaque honouring him was unveiled in 2005 on the Mathieu Da Costa African Heritage Trail in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, and Port-Royal National Historic Site recognizes his role as interpreter. Canada Post issued a stamp in 2017 for Black History Month. A 2009 bill to create a Mathieu Da Costa Day on the first Monday in February died on the order paper.

For readers, the careful reading is that Da Costa is a documented person in the early French Atlantic world, with a contract, a kidnapping, a jail term and a lawsuit to his name, whose Canadian voyages are probable in the eyes of many historians but unproven. The documents that do survive show a Black interpreter whose labour was valued, bargained over and contested by European merchants.

His story sits at the start of a longer record of Black life in New France, including that of Olivier Le Jeune and the archive’s silence on slavery and the 1734 execution of Marie-Joseph Angélique in Montreal. Later arrivals are covered in our account of the nearly 2,000 Black Refugees who reached Nova Scotia after 1814.

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Sources: The Canadian Encyclopedia, Mathieu Da Costa; Wikipedia, Mathieu da Costa.