Kechemeche

The Kechemeche were Lenape people of the Cape May peninsula, between the Atlantic coast and Delaware Bay. Hunting grounds and coastal waters formed part of their homeland before European settlers established themselves there. An account attributed to Robert Evelyn in 1634 described the Kechemeche as a community with about fifty men, one of several Indigenous communities he enumerated in southern New Jersey.

During the seventeenth century, incoming settlers acquired land and developed fishing and whaling settlements. Disease, settlement pressure and changes associated with European farming and livestock reduced the Indigenous population and contributed to movement away from New Jersey. Some families nevertheless remained. Local tradition remembers the leader Nummis, also called Nummy, staying near Cape May and raising his deceased sister's children. Nummytown preserved his name in the landscape, alongside the continuing memory of Kechemeche ties to the peninsula.