The Nome Cult March was a forced walk, a dark example of California’s own Trail of Tears. A forced relocation of approximately 461 Native California people, mostly Maidu and Nomlaki, from Fort Bidwell in Chico to the Round Valley Indian Reservation. On the walk to the Nome Cult Reservation,  Native men, women and children faced a grueling 133 mile trek over rugged mountainous terrain; many did not survive. The expulsion of Native people from their ancestral homelands is a direct result of what is now referred to as the California Indian Wars. Between the decades of 1850 and 1870, hundreds, if not thousands of Native men, women and children were captured, deemed prisoners of war, and subjected to cruel forms of slavery. During this timeframe, the non-native public, spurred on by the elected leadership of California, fomented policies of forced removal and politically enshrined extermination of Native California people.

One such so-called “war” centered on Round Valley and is referred to as the Mendocino War. The Mendocino War has its antecedents based in the outbreak of Civil War in 1861, a national rift that  dramatically increased the presence of U. S. military troops in California and occasioned the organization of the California Volunteer militia. Troops were largely deployed to aid the increasing numbers of settlers with removal of Native California peoples from their own homelands, including Mendocino County and surrounding regions. The militia groups and the few soldiers in the region carried out unauthorized and heinous attacks under the self-proclaimed charge of protecting newly arriving settlers from often erroneous or overly exaggerated descriptions of clashes between whites and Indians. 

In the years prior to the Nome Cult March, more than a few groups of self-identified “Indian fighters” (Euro-American settlers who agreed to fight the natives) called militias, conducted horrific depredations upon Natives throughout California, individually and collectively. Frequent kidnapping of children, attacks upon rancherias, even outright killings were carried out by these militias. Conflict was a persistent dynamic between the white settlers and the Nome Cult Reservation, home to hundreds of Indians. The often violent threats directed at the Reservation resulted in poor administration of services and finances, further depriving the resident Natives of the scant resources and failed protection. In 1862, the Reservation was described in military reports as neglected and in general disrepair.

Meanwhile, in and near Tehama county, the local white communities had sustained a high disregard and disdain for those visible Native groups remaining in the area; these communities strongly desired ridding the area and townships of all Native people. The most significant factor instigating a harsh removal attitude was based on loud public proclamations of local Natives committing acts of murder. Communities submitted petitions to political leaders demanding a military solution to the ongoing “Indian problem.” In response, unsanctioned volunteer militias carried out attacks on numerous Indian settlements. Citizens became increasingly enraged, determined to remove all Natives. This pervasive attitude culminated in the Nome Cult march. Also, the post located in Chico was disbanded in 1863 with a new charge of escorting a small group of Indians west to the Round Valley Reservation. However, the small group was almost immediately enlarged to include all Indians held at Fort Bidwell. The forced 133 mile march began on September 4, 1863.

Today, in 2024, the reservation is referred to as  the Round Valley Indian Tribes which is  composed of seven distinct tribal groups. The Native people affiliated with these seven tribal groups readily  identify as members of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, but also claim a strong attachment to their original tribal homelands that lie far beyond northeastern Mendocino County. The Nome Cult Walk that brought many of the families to the Valley long ago persists as a decades old symbolic communal effort to recall the original horrors of 1863 removal.  Walkers and supporters express a message of commitment and respect to the original walkers while displaying their deep ties to their reservation membership and their familial and spiritual attachment to their tribal homelands outside Round Valley.