The Key Marco Artifacts

The Marco Island Historical Society (MIHS) celebrates its 25th Anniversary and the realization of a 25-year quest to bring “home” on loan the world-famous Key Marco Cat and other rare Pre-Columbian Native American artifacts discovered on Marco Island, Florida in 1896. 

Several of the most significant Key Marco artifacts are together again on Marco Island at the Marco Island Historical Museum for the first time since their discovery by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing more than 100 years ago. The exhibit runs now until April , 2026.

The Key Marco Cat is one of the finest pieces of Pre-Columbian Native American art ever discovered in North America. At only six inches tall and carved from native hardwood, the Key Marco Cat is a charismatic anthropomorphic feline statuette that has captured the public’s imagination for more than a century. Other important pieces in the exhibition include a ceremonial mask, alligator figurehead, painted human figure and sea turtle figurehead.

		The Key Marco Cat Image courtesy of Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution (A240915)
		Alligator Head Figure Image courtesy of Penn Museum (image #298908)
		Sea Turtle Figure Image courtesy of Penn Museum (image #298907)
		Spoon Bill Man Mask Image courtesy of Penn Museum (image #298906)
		Shell Man Image courtesy of Penn Museum (image #298896)

The MIHS has mounted the exhibit in collaboration with Collier County Museums, the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The loaned artifacts are featured within the Museum’s award-winning permanent exhibit — Paradise Found: 6,000 Years of People on Marco Island — that includes interactive activity stations, state-of-the-art projections and animations, original artwork depicting the Cushing expedition and the daily activities and ceremonies of the Calusa and their ancestors as well as an immersive life-size Calusa Village.

 

Exhibit Photographs courtesy of Vandy Major

“This exhibition is the culmination of a long-term vision to bring these incredibly important artifacts to Marco Island on loan in order to educate and inspire people of all ages about the fascinating history of our region,” says MIHS Curator of Collections Austin Bell. “It has taken years of planning and discussions with the lending institutions and the continuation of a public-private partnership that includes the Marco Island Historical Society, Collier County and the community.”

Artwork by Merald Clark

Cushing’s 1896 Key Marco excavation produced some of the greatest discoveries in the history of North American archaeology. Because the artifacts were buried in an oxygen-free layer of muck, these rare wooden objects — between 500 and 1,500 years old — were astonishingly well preserved.

Many began disintegrating upon exposure to the air. Those that survived, along with lifelike watercolors and field photographs of the pieces captured by expedition artist Wells M. Sawyer, provide extraordinary insight into the daily lives of the Calusa Indians and their ancestors. The Calusa dominated Florida’s Southwest Coast and controlled South Florida by the time the Spanish arrived in the 16^th Century.

Since their discovery by Cushing, the returning Key Marco artifacts have been preserved by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Others are at the National Museum of the American Indian, the Florida Museum of Natural History, and the British Museum.