books – The Key Marco Cat

Cat Tales

an interview with Austin Bell

SMALL WOOD CARVING, half cat/half human, is one of the most treasured and important pieces of pre-Columbian Native American art ever discovered in North America. Known as the Key Marco Cat, it was found in 1896 in the marshes of what is now called Marco Island. Since 1913, the Key Marco Cat has been exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the National Gallery of Art, as well as brief exhibitions at Art Museums in Detroit, Houston, Chicago and St. Louis. It returned to the When the Collier County Museum in 1995 for six months and Marco Island Historical Society and Collier County to Marco Island in 1999 for five months at Citizens Community Bank. The Cat returned to Marco Island in 2018, featured in the current exhibit, ‘Paradise first built the Found: 6,000 Years of people on Marco Island’, museum in which will be on view until 2010, one of April 2026. its crowning Austin Bell is the Curator of architectural Collections for the Marco Island features was a Historical Society. His new book, display ‘vault’ The Nine Lives of Florida’s Key in which they hoped the Key Marco Cat would Marco Cat (University Press of florida), tells the stories of its surprising discovery and enduring eventually be importance—to both the people on display. who carved it 1000 years ago and the people fascinated by it today. I asked Bell a few questions about his new book.

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Without going into the scientific details of the book, can you explain why it has been so difficult to determine the type of wood the Key Marco Cat is made of? It’s interesting because many of the other wooden artifacts recovered from the Key Marco site have been identified as cypress, pine, and other species in recent years. However, to identify the Key Marco Cat specifically, scientists would likely have to perform what’s called ‘destructive analysis’—where a piece of the artifact is sacrificed for research purposes—in order to examine the cellular structure of the wood under a microscope. Given the object’s fragility and unique notoriety, this is highly unlikely.

As best can be determined, the Cat was created

by Andrew Elias

between 500 BC–1700 AD. Why has it been so difficult to determine a more exact date?

The uncertainty surrounding its age has largely to do with when it was excavated. In 1896, American archaeology was still in its relative infancy. There was less emphasis on recording context than there was on finding the ‘choicest’ specimens. Very little in the way of context was documented at the Key Marco site, and many of the technologies that archaeologists rely on today simply didn’t exist yet. For example, radiocarbon dating wouldn’t become mainstream for another half-century. The Cat could theoretically be radiocarbon dated today, but again, that would require destructive analysis – and some believe the results would be tainted by pesticides used in museum storage anyway. Most of us in Southwest Florida are familiar with the Calusa people who inhabited the Everglades and the areas now known as Marco Island and Fort Myers Beach, but few know anything about the people who lived south of the Caloosahatchee River as far back as 3000 BC. Can you tell us about these early communities and how the Calusa, as you say in the book, ‘absorbed, allied or replaced’ them? People have been living on or near Marco Island for thousands of years, beginning in the Archaic Period nearly 6,000 years ago (if not earlier). These people were not necessarily the direct lineal descendants of the Calusa, but certainly some of the technologies they developed, such as a vast assemblage of shell tools and the earliest-known pottery in Florida, are precursors to the more sophisticated technologies utilized later by the Calusa. And sandwiched in between the Archaic and Calusa periods, we have evidence of a distinct Glades cultural period on Marco Island (and southward) between about 500 BC-1350 CE. At the Marco Island Historical Museum, we have dubbed these Glades people the ‘Muspa,’ which was the Calusa name for the Marco Island area.

After about 1350 CE, as the Calusa domain ex-

People have been living on or near Marco Island for thousands of years, beginning in the Archaic Period nearly 6,000 years ago (if not earlier).

panded out of the Fort Myers area, the pottery at Glades and Calusa sites becomes more similar in composition and style, indicating that the Calusa likely “absorbed, allied with, or replaced” the Muspa on Marco Island.

How do we know that they had cultural exchanges with societies thousands of miles away?

We know this because of certain materials found in the archaeological record. For example, the modified remains of lightning whelk shells have been found at major sites like Cahokia in Missouri. Obviously, they must have been transported there over some distance, likely from the Gulf of Mexico. At Pineland, archaeologists discovered a fragment of galena (a mineral form of lead) dating to 1250 CE that originated in southeastern Missouri, traveling more than 1,000 miles to Southwest Florida. Even on Marco Island there is evidence of long-distance trade, as small amounts of pottery typically originating from Northwest and East Florida have been found in recent archaeological digs. What makes this diminutive icon—only six inches high—such a revered work of art and important anthropological, archeological and historical icon?

I think the Key Marco Cat is special because it is a truly timeless work of art, arguably the ‘crown jewel’ of the entire Key Marco collection. Archaeologists usually find refuse and remnants of tools or other disposable goods–but not fully intact works of art.

The Cat is also simultaneously familiar and foreign, likely inspired in-part by the recognizable Florida panther, but created by a culture so distant that most of what we know about it comes from archaeology and limited ethnohistorical records. And it looks like it could have been carved yesterday.

Its preservation is so remarkable that it is hard to comprehend that it was likely carved using shark-tooth tools more than 500 years ago. The fact that it has been in the public’s collective consciousness for so long too, having been excavated in 1896 and incorporated into numerous exhibitions and publications since then, has helped solidify its status as a cultural icon.

Why is it thought that it was carved using shark-tooth tools? What are these tools like?

This theory is due to the sheer number of shark-tooth tools found at the Key Marco site, including some still hafted to their wooden handles, as well as the obvious striations and wear on certain wooden artifacts. There is also a dearth of natural stone in South Florida, making shark teeth more likely as carving instruments. Archaeologist Frank Hamilton Cushing reported that ‘cutting and carving knives of shark’s teeth . . . were found by the hundreds’ and at least 17 wooden handles ranged in length from four to eleven inches. They may have varied in size dependent on use, much the way a painter would select a narrow or broad paintbrush depending on the level of work being done. Similarly, artistic preferences may have merited certain species of shark teeth for certain tasks, as the ‘serrated’ tiger shark tooth is much different than the ‘pointy’ lemon shark tooth, both of which have been found in archaeological contexts. Some believe that the Key Marco Cat is a religious icon. What was the importance of the cat — or panther — in First Nations religions and myths? Generally, in Southeastern tribes, the panther is portrayed as a dangerous creature in myths relating to hunting or warfare. These myths indicate that panthers hold special powers or knowledge that can sometimes be transmitted to humans. Cushing’s instincts about the Cat fall in line with this idea, believing it to be ‘a fetish or god of war or the hunt.’ In many Native stories, panthers are the progenitors—or original ancestors—of tribal clans and could travel between worlds, transforming between human and panther, sometimes acting as protectors or guardian figures. Physically, the Cat is anthropomorphic, meaning it has both human and animal (in this case,

The Key Marco Cat feline) characteristics, lending creis believed to be a fetish dence the idea that it may represent or god of war or the hunt. a person—perhaps an ancestor— in a state of ritual transformation. What were some of the other important and surprising artifacts unearthed during that Smithsonian Institution-sponsored expedition in 1896? Most of the artifacts uncovered at Key Marco were made of wood or plant fiber, meaning that literally hundreds of them were ‘important’ and/or ‘surprising’ in the sense that they were the types of artifacts not ordinarily recovered from archaeological sites. That’s how prolific the site was. The list includes wooden masks and figureheads, netting, rope, atlatls [a stick used to propel a spear], wooden bowls, mortar & pestle kits, toy canoes, trays, tablets, gourds, stools, shell tool handles, shark-tooth slashing weapons, and more—all centuries old and improbably well-preserved. Most amazingly, some of the masks and figureheads even still had paint visible on them!

To this day, Key Marco represents the most comprehensive and spectacular assemblage of pre-Columbian Native American material culture ever discovered in Florida. It offers our best window into the everyday life of a complex maritime society centered around fishing.

How did the ‘Paradise Found: 6,000 Years of people on Marco Island’ exhibit come about?

Honestly, the exhibit was a dream long before I was hired as Curator in 2013. In fact, when the Marco Island Historical Society and Collier County first built the museum in 2010, one of its crowning architectural features was a display ‘vault’ in which they hoped the Key Marco Cat would eventually be on display. Talk about blind ambition!

Of course, it would take years of work to ready the museum exhibits and facilities for a loan of the Key Marco Cat—which was never guaranteed, mind you But that was always the goal, even as we fleshed out the rest of the museum. And now, more than a decade later, the real Cat sits in the display vault, just as intended, giving a sense of completion to the entire museum.

How does it feel having the Key Marco Cat back ‘home’?

It feels right. The local community is so invested in the Cat as a source of pride and the Smithsonian Institution has been such a supportive partner that the whole experience thus far has been wonderful. As an educational tool, the Cat is a great ‘gateway object’, in that it grabs peoples’ attention and, in turn, engages them with the complex histories of the Calusa and their ancestors.

There is no substitute for the ‘real thing’ when trying to interest people in the past, and the fact that this Smithsonian object was pulled from the muck just a few miles down the road from the museum really resonates with our visitors. Despite the ongoing pandemic, more than 53,000 people have seen it in-person since January 2019. •

The Key Marco Cat, and other rare pre-Columbian Native American artifacts, are on view in the ‘Paradise Found: 6,000 Years of people on Marco Island’ exhibit at the Marco Island Historical Museum thru April 2026. The museum, open TueSat 9am-4pm, is located at 180 S. Heathwood Drive on Marco Island. Admission is free. Call 252-1440 for information.