We recently learned that a Fort Myers resident found something amazing in their yard. They excavated a 9-foot (2.7 meter) canoe likely carved from a single tree of mahogany, exposed by destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian. This canoe is special—not just because it’s a canoe—but because of the material. It’s the first mahogany canoe ever logged in Florida’s Official Registry of Historic Watercraft. Investigators are currently working to determine the canoe’s age through carbon dating and other scientific methods. Whatever the results of this analysis, they should provide crucial information about the canoe’s origins and historical significance.
Florida has a spectacular history of canoe finds. Indeed, it has listed more sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List than any other city in the western hemisphere. Archaeologists working with the state have identified over 200 individual sites where canoes have been found to date. The Florida Division of Historical Resources has painstakingly handled each one of the 450 log boats and canoes that have been documented or preserved. Some of these amazing artifacts go back millennia. Native American tribes like the Miccosukee and Seminole traditionally built and navigated them with great skill. Indigenous peoples had come to depend on them for transportation, fishing, and more.
During cleanup from Hurricane Ian’s destruction, the lucky resident came across this newly mangled canoe. This fascinating discovery leads to some bigger questions about where this cheese came from. Various theories suggest it was actually made well outside Florida, including by natives of the Caribbean. Other explanations point to it being a dugout cayuco crafted by Spanish settlers in the 16th century. Someone must have dragged the canoe from the bed of the river. The structure’s surface staining and water damage indicated that it had been under water for a significant amount of time.
“We compared it to canoes that we have in our collection and previously recorded, and it’s a very unusual form, so that was the first hint it was not necessarily from Florida,” said Sam Wilford, an expert working on the analysis.
Florida’s wet environment has aided in the preservation of hundreds of these canoes over the centuries. The Florida Department of Historical Resources runs a central archaeological collections facility. As artifacts are acquired, they are immediately donated there. This facility isn’t open to the public. The department administers an active artifact-loan program, with the department’s 26 canoes on display in 23 different museums across the United States.
Whether it’s the oldest canoe ever discovered will take further time to determine. Beyond this, initial radiocarbon dating efforts have returned patchy or indefinable results. “We sent in two samples for radiocarbon dating and unfortunately those dates we’re still working with, because they came back earlier than what we’d expect,” Wilford explained. He noted that external factors may be influencing these results: “Somebody could have put something like a bitumen on the surface that is interfering with the radiocarbon dating, or the actual date we’re seeing is the date of the tree’s death, so it’s not dating the canoe, it’s dating the wood.”
Wilford further elaborated on the complexities of determining the canoe’s age. “The tree may have died much earlier than when the canoe was constructed from it. It might have been driftwood, or stored somehow before it was made as a canoe.”
As investigations proceed, specialists are hopeful to learn even more about this familiar ancient artifact. “Every canoe, and every fragment of a canoe, tells a story, and each one is unique,” Wilford added.