The Return: The Key Marco Artifact Loans

Cushing’s 1896 expedition to Marco Island sparked more than a century of archaeological discovery in Southwest Florida. In the years following his finds, other archaeologists descended upon the area in hopes of making similar discoveries. None were successful on the same scale, but the artifacts, notes, and records they left behind laid the foundation upon which Florida’s archaeological record is built. As a result, public awareness of the Calusa and their ancestors has increased dramatically in Florida over the past century. To this day, Cushing’s work and his discoveries at Key Marco are still being studied, interpreted, and shared in books classrooms, and museum exhibits across the country.

Including Durnford’s finds, which he donated to the British Museum in 1895, artifacts from Key Marco are currently represented in five of the world’s most revered museums. Since the Pepper-Hearst Expedition was a joint venture between the University of Pennsylvania and the Smithsonian Institution, Cushing agreed to an “equal division” of any recovered artifacts. Select artifacts from Pennsylvania were later transferred to what is now the National Museum of the American Indian and the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The working conditions at the site were difficult. Cushing’s team battled high temperatures and humidity, tropical downpours, mosquitoes, sand fleas, and the sulfuric stench from the swampy “unpromising hole” in which they worked. According to the team’s artist, Wells Sawyer, three or four crew members worked side by side digging inch by inch through the muck while standing or crouching in puddles of mud and water.

By today’s standards, Cushing’s approach to excavation might be labeled unprofessional. His team pulled artifacts from the muck with their bare hands and garden tools, and many potential artifacts were either discarded or missed altogether. However, in 1896, when archaeology was a relatively new academic discipline, his methods were decidedly innovative. Notably, Cushing’s use of the grid system was one of the first of its kind, and his water drainage system allowed the crew to excavate an entire wet site at a time when pumps and portable generators were not available.

No. Some objects disintegrated almost immediately upon contact with air and light. Cushing estimated that around 25% of all perishable artifacts were completely destroyed during the excavation, and “not more than one-half retained their form for more than a few days.” Fortunately, Cushing had the foresight to recruit talented young artist and photographer Wells Sawyer for the expedition, who recorded the state of many of the artifacts soon after they were unearthed.

Uncovered by Frank Hamilton Cushing on March 5, 1896, the Key Marco Cat is one of the most famous pre-Columbian Native American artifacts ever discovered in Florida. It was carved out of dense native wood between 500 and 1,500 years ago by a Muspa or Calusa artisan at Key Marco and was likely modeled after the native Florida panther. At just six inches tall, the iconic and charismatic anthropomorphic carving captured imaginations around the world in the decades since its discovery. On Marco Island, where it originated centuries ago, the object is now a source of identity and pride for its modern residents.

It is preserved in perpetuity by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and has, with the help of the Marco Island Historical Society, returned on loan to Collier County, Florida three times – in 1996, 1999, and 2018.

Explore its story further in MIHS books like The Nine Lives of Florida’s Key Marco Cat and Lost and Found: The Adventures of Marco the Cat.