Buldam is a former

Pomo The Pomo are a Indigenous peoples of California, Native American people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to ...

settlement in

Mendocino County Mendocino County (; ''Mendocino'', Spanish language, Spanish for "of Antonio de Mendoza, Mendoza") is a County (United States), county located on the North Coast (California), North Coast of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United S ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It was located on the north bank of the Big River, near the mouth of the river and east of the present town of Mendocino; its precise location is unknown. Buldam, alternatively spelled Booldam or Bull Don, has been said to mean either "big river" in the Pomo language, or "big holes", referring to the blowholes on the nearby coastal bluffs. Following the standard conventions of the Pomo people, in which a community of the Pomo was named by adding "-pomo" to the name of their principal site, the community at Buldam was called Buldam-pomo. According to some Pomo sources, it was founded in around 1851 by people from the Mitom Pomo who had been driven out of Nabo and other inland valley settlements by European settlers. Its founding sparked a war between the Mitom Pomo and the Pomo from

Point Arena Point Arena, formerly known as Punta Arena (Spanish for "Sandy Point") is a small coastal city in Mendocino County, California, United States. Point Arena is located west of Hopland, at an elevation of . The population was 460 at the 2020 cen ...

, possibly over ownership of the area. However, this chronology is brought into question by other sources, who claim that cargo from the wreck of the Frolic in 1850, roughly north of the Big River, was salvaged by Pomo from Buldam. A different story about the cause of war between the Point Arena Pomo and the Buldam Pomo involves an incident in which one of the Point Arena Pomo was poisoned. In 1856, the

Mendocino Indian Reservation Mendocino Indian Reservation, a former Indian reservation in Mendocino County, one of the early Indian reservations to be established in California by the federal government for the resettlement of California Indians. It was established in the sp ...

was established north of what is now

Fort Bragg Fort Bragg (formerly Fort Liberty from 2023–2025) is a United States Army, U.S. Army Military base, military installation located in North Carolina. It ranks among the largest military bases in the world by population, with more than 52,000 m ...

, and Native Americans from a wide area were forcibly taken there, and then to other reservations after it closed in 1866. By 1903, Buldam was gone; the only nearby settlements of Pomo that could be found off-reservation were in Fort Bragg, Noyo, and

Little River Little River may refer to several places: Australia Streams New South Wales *Little River (Dubbo), source in the Dubbo region, a tributary of the Macquarie River * Little River (Oberon), source in the Oberon Shire, a tributary of Coxs River (Haw ...

References

Former settlements in Mendocino County, California Former populated places in California Lost Native American populated places in the United States Pomo villages {{MendocinoCountyCA-geo-stub