Before Naples: the Calusa and the Gulf coast, the back story

About Before Naples: the Calusa and the Gulf coast, the back story

By the ULTIMATE Naples Editorial Team

Long before winter visitors arrived, Southwest Florida was the land of the Calusa, a powerful people who lived from the sea and the estuaries, and whose shell mounds still rise from the islands south of Naples.

The Calusa

The Calusa were the dominant people of Southwest Florida when Spanish explorers arrived in the 16th century. Unlike most peoples who built powerful societies, they did not farm: the estuaries, mangroves and seagrass beds of the Gulf coast gave them fish, shellfish and plants in abundance.

Shell mounds and Key Marco

They built towns on mounds of shells, some of which survive in the Ten Thousand Islands and around Marco Island. In 1896 the archaeologist Frank Hamilton Cushing excavated waterlogged remains at Key Marco and found remarkable wooden carvings, among them the famous Key Marco cat.

The Calusa built their world not from stone but from shells, raising mounds and canals among the mangroves.

After the Calusa

European diseases, slave raids and wars had destroyed Calusa society by the 18th century. In the 19th century the region was a frontier of the Seminole wars, then of fishermen, plume hunters and a handful of settlers, reachable only by boat.

Our advice: visit the Marco Island Historical Museum to understand the Calusa, and look out for the shell mounds on a boat trip through the Ten Thousand Islands.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Before Naples: the Calusa and the Gulf coast, the back story before you go.