Shamong Township (pronounced "Shuh-Mong") is a township in Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 6,460, The township, and all of Burlington County, is a part of the Philadelphia-Reading-Camden combined statistical area and the Delaware Valley.
Shamong was incorporated as a township by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 19, 1852, from portions of Medford, Southampton and Washington townships. Portions of the township were taken to form Woodland Township (March 7, 1866) and Tabernacle Township (March 22, 1901). In April 1902, portions of Hammonton and Waterford Township were annexed to the township. The township's name comes from Native American terms meaning "place of the big horn", from the words oschummo ("horn") and onk ("place").
New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Shamong Township as its 6th best place to live in its 2008 rankings of the "Best Places To Live" in New Jersey.
History
This area, along with much of present-day southern New Jersey, was inhabited by Lenape Native Americans at the time of European encounter. They spoke Unami, one of the three major dialects of the Lenape language, which belonged to the Algonquian language family. The Lenape territory ranged from the New York metropolitan area and western Long Island, extending into New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River, and Delaware.
By the mid-18th century, English colonists had displaced the local Lenape of southern New Jersey onto what was previously known as the Brotherton Indian Reservation. This reservation was in the area of present-day Indian Mills, which was named after mills built and operated by the Brotherton people, who were converted Christian Indians. Some of them were relocated in 1765 from Cranbury, New Jersey. With sustained pressure following the American Revolutionary War, the Brotherton Indians of New Jersey migrated to New York. They accepted an offer by the Stockbridge–Munsee Community, also Christian converts, to settle on their reservation in the central part of the state, where they had been allocated land by the Oneida people, one of the Iroquois nations. Some of the Munsee-speaking Lenape from the northern part of their territory also migrated there. These remaining communities were attempting to reorganize after years of disease and conflict with colonists and major powers. The Brotherton Indians sold their last property in New Jersey in 1818 and had essentially been absorbed by the Munsee.
Following the Revolutionary War, settlers from New England flooded into New York, encroaching on Indian territory. Ultimately, the Stockbridge and Munsee were relocated to Wisconsin in the 1820s and 1830s, forced out along with the Oneida by the United States Indian Removal policy, which sought to relocate Native Americans to the west of the Mississippi River. Today, the Stockbridge–Munsee Community is a federally recognized tribe, with a reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin.
In 1992, a non-binding referendum gave voters the opportunity to consider renaming the township to Indian Mills, the name of an unincorporated community within the township.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the township had a total area of 45.01 square miles (116.58 km<sup>2</sup>), including 44.45 square miles (115.14 km<sup>2</sup>) of land and 0.56 square miles (1.44 km<sup>2</sup>) of water (1.24%).
The township borders Medford Township, Tabernacle Township, and Washington Township in Burlington County; Hammonton in Atlantic County; and Waterford Township in Camden County.
The township is one of 56 South Jersey municipalities that are included within the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, a protected natural area of unique ecology covering , that has been classified as a United States Biosphere Reserve and established by Congress in 1978 as the nation's first National Reserve. All of the township is included in the state-designated Pinelands Area, which includes portions of Burlington County, along with areas in Atlantic, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester and Ocean counties.