Mathias de Sousa was the first colonist of African descent in Maryland. According to applications made by the Jesuits for a warrant to survey land to which they had laid claim, Father Andrew White brought de Sousa to Maryland on the first voyage of the Ark and the Dove in 1633-34. The first application stated that de Sousa was a "mulatto." No other surviving documents took notice of his race, and no records have been found that would identify when or where he was born, who his parents were, or when he died. However, a mulatto named de Sousa who worked for the Jesuits would probably have been a Catholic with both African and Portuguese ancestors.

Mathias de Sousa knew how to sail, lead men, and trade with the Indians. In 1641, the Jesuits "appointed" him to take charge of a small boat on a two month voyage to trade with the Susquehannock Indians. The following year, de Sousa gave a deposition on behalf of John Prettiman, one of the men he had hired for the voyage, in Prettiman's suit against the Jesuit fathers for unpaid wages. The trading venture must have been difficult because de Sousa said that Prettiman had saved the boat and the men from destruction at the hands of the Susquehannocks.

De Sousa was also recorded as having been present at a General Assembly meeting in 1641[2] in which votes were taken on the colony's laws, indicating that he was a free man who voted. However, freedom was precarious. De Sousa became indebted to the colony's secretary, John Lewger, and to planter John Hollis. The last trace of Matthias de Sousa in the records of the colony is an order of the court in 1642 requiring him to serve John Lewger for a limited period of time to pay off a debt.

In short, de Sousa exercised the same rights as white colonists-to vote, to give evidence, and to make contracts. He earned the trust of the men who knew him and faced the common hardships of his time. Perhaps he had borrowed money to speculate on his own in the ill-fated trading venture for the Jesuits. We can do little more than speculate about him in the absence of more documentary evidence.

Bogen, David S. Mathias de Sousa: Maryland's First Colonist of African Descent." Maryland Historical Magazine. 96 (2001): 68-85.