The journey home for the Navajo included groups of mixed clans, with women, children and the elderly this time riding on carts. Some rode horses, some walked. There were some supplies and animals distributed among the groups. No soldiers shot anyone for slowing an entourage.
Manuelito, the last Navajo chief to surrender in 1864, described the Return Walk in 1868:
"The days and nights were long before it came time for us to go to our homes. The day we were to start, we went a little way toward home, because we were so anxious. We told the drivers to whip up the mules, we were in such a hurry. When we saw the top of the mountain from Albuquerque we wondered if it was our mountain, and we felt like talking to the ground, we loved it so, and some of the old men and the old women cried with joy when they reached their home".
The oral history of an orphan Navajo girl returning home from Fort Sumner:
"There was talk about the Navajo going home, so much so that people were packing their things. The word came to everyone that they would be able to leave in the next few days. No one could sleep, not any baby, or old man or lady, not even the young people. As if magic, the whole camp moved by itself during the night to West of the river. This was because the people were excited.
The next day they were told they could return home, and it was if the whole of them was lifted by the wind and they walked every way they could. It was during this time she saw a light come to the eyes of the people and they began to sing old songs and walk with sore feet and hunger found them with spirit in their bodies and did not stop them. She found herself helping old folks with the few things they carried. Some of them had managed to store anyway, little bits of com pollen from long ago. When they crossed the highland they could see the tip of a peak to the West It was small on the horizon The old people spoke quietly, ''what mountain is that?'' Someone said, ''is that our mountain, one of our Sacred Mountains?" The word came from up ahead it is so. Today, it is Mount Taylor.
The old ladies fell to the ground and cried, they were so glad to see it there in the distance. And in the way of our people, they took a little com pollen and blessed the land, and themselves and gave thanks that they could see their own country."
