Lenni Lenape Burial Site
Marlboro Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey
Marker Inscription
This is a burial site to the Native American tribe Lenni Lenape
The Story
Long before New Jersey took its name, the land around present-day Marlboro belonged to the Lenni Lenape — the "Original People" whose villages, trails, and planting grounds spread across the Delaware Valley and the Jersey shore country. A burial ground like this one marks a place the Lenape held sacred, where the dead were laid to rest according to customs carried through countless generations before European settlers arrived in the 1600s. The Lenape were farmers, fishers, and traders whose presence shaped the region's earliest paths and place-names, many of which endure today.
Why it matters
Native burial sites are among the few surviving physical links to the Indigenous nations who lived here for millennia before colonization, and honoring them affirms that American history did not begin with European arrival.
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