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obligations to individuals - first-branch -commission under the 17th article

Cases where the commission awarded compensation to Attornies, payable in the Cherokee Country on the Commissioners' requisitions, out of the amount allowed to the Cherokees, can be scrutinized through the accounts & vouchers of the Disbursing Agents, which are filed in the office of the Second Auditor; but, generally, the transactions of the Commission with Attornies seem hidden with Template:??? dexterity from analysis. The amounts received by them for prosecuting Cherokee claims before it, in many instances, cannot, probably, be ascertained at all; - especially where the Attornies drew the whole amount awarded and settled with the Indian in person I find a statement of six & twenty cases, in which the aggregate sum of one hundred & six thousand & twenty seven dollars, was received for the Cherokees by six Attornies, who took nineteen thousand nine hundred & nine dollars, eighty six cents, out of it for themselves. Most of these were paid simply on proof of having prosecuted the claim, without any evidence of agreement with the claimant, or of authority from him to draw. In a number of cases of claims to reservations, presented by Attorneys before

the Commissioners, it appears that the 

Statement of the claim, of the evidence, and

of