Mathieu da Costa
E280568
Mathieu da Costa was an early 17th-century interpreter and navigator of African descent who is recognized as the first recorded Black person to have visited what is now Canada.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Mathieu da Costa canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T2572625 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Mathieu da Costa Context triple: [Black Canadians, earliestDocumentedIndividuals, Mathieu da Costa]
-
A.
Jeremias Posier
Jeremias Posier was an 18th-century jeweler best known for crafting the Imperial Crown of Russia used in the coronation of Russian emperors.
-
B.
Toussaint Bréda
Toussaint Bréda, better known as Toussaint Louverture, was the formerly enslaved leader who became the principal architect and military strategist of the Haitian Revolution and a founding figure of Haiti’s independence movement.
-
C.
Charles Barbaroux
Charles Barbaroux was a prominent French revolutionary politician and lawyer associated with the Girondin faction during the French Revolution.
-
D.
Gabriel Leveque
Gabriel Leveque was an artist known for creating religious murals, including notable works in Port-au-Prince’s Holy Trinity Cathedral.
-
E.
Antoine Étex
Antoine Étex was a 19th-century French sculptor, painter, and architect known for his Romantic and monumental works, including sculptures on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Mathieu da Costa Target entity description: Mathieu da Costa was an early 17th-century interpreter and navigator of African descent who is recognized as the first recorded Black person to have visited what is now Canada.
-
A.
Jeremias Posier
Jeremias Posier was an 18th-century jeweler best known for crafting the Imperial Crown of Russia used in the coronation of Russian emperors.
-
B.
Toussaint Bréda
Toussaint Bréda, better known as Toussaint Louverture, was the formerly enslaved leader who became the principal architect and military strategist of the Haitian Revolution and a founding figure of Haiti’s independence movement.
-
C.
Charles Barbaroux
Charles Barbaroux was a prominent French revolutionary politician and lawyer associated with the Girondin faction during the French Revolution.
-
D.
Gabriel Leveque
Gabriel Leveque was an artist known for creating religious murals, including notable works in Port-au-Prince’s Holy Trinity Cathedral.
-
E.
Antoine Étex
Antoine Étex was a 19th-century French sculptor, painter, and architect known for his Romantic and monumental works, including sculptures on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (41)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
historical figure
ⓘ
interpreter ⓘ navigator ⓘ |
| activePeriod | early 17th century ⓘ |
| associatedWith |
Dutch traders
ⓘ
French explorers ⓘ |
| centuryOfActivity | 17th century ⓘ |
| citizenship | Portuguese Empire ⓘ |
| commemoratedBy | Mathieu da Costa Challenge ⓘ |
| commemoratedIn | Canadian Black History Month events ⓘ |
| countryVisited | Canada ⓘ |
| ethnicOrigin | African descent ⓘ |
| fieldOfWork |
cross-cultural mediation
ⓘ
maritime navigation ⓘ |
| gender | male ⓘ |
| historicalEvidence | documented in early 1600s legal and notarial records ⓘ |
| historicalRegionOfOrigin | West Africa ⓘ |
| historicalStatus | first recorded Black person in Canada ⓘ |
| knownFor |
multilingual abilities
ⓘ
work as an interpreter in North America ⓘ |
| languageSpoken |
Dutch
ⓘ
French ⓘ Indigenous languages of northeastern North America ⓘ Pidgin Basque ⓘ Portuguese ⓘ |
| legalStatus | subject of contractual disputes between French and Dutch employers ⓘ |
| nameVariant |
Mateus da Costa
ⓘ
Matheus de Coste ⓘ
linked to:
Mateus da Costa
|
| nationality | Portuguese ⓘ |
| notableFor | being the first recorded Black person to visit what is now Canada ⓘ |
| occupation |
interpreter
ⓘ
navigator ⓘ |
| placeOfActivity |
Atlantic coast of North America
ⓘ
Europe ⓘ |
| recognizedBy |
Government of Canada
ⓘ
linked to:
Canadian federal government (Ottawa)
|
| regionVisited | New France ⓘ |
| role | intermediary between Europeans and Indigenous peoples ⓘ |
| subjectOf |
Canadian Black history scholarship
ⓘ
heritage recognition programs in Canada ⓘ |
| uncertainDateOfBirth | true ⓘ |
| uncertainDateOfDeath | true ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Mathieu da Costa Description of subject: Mathieu da Costa was an early 17th-century interpreter and navigator of African descent who is recognized as the first recorded Black person to have visited what is now Canada.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.