.MTA1OA.NzE0Mzc

"common people" as Mr Schermerhorn is pleased to term them, any of their rights. This being the voluntary act of the proper and rightful Chiefs, in conjunction with the people. no power, therefore, has been Template:Unclear from them by the designing few. - Mr Schermerhorn would further conceive it Template:Unclear criminal that even the annuity should be placed under the superintending care of their Committee, because, as he says, that is had always been paid to the Chiefs, who distributed it among the people; - and now, as far as he can learn, from that day to this, there have been no more division of the annuity among the people except what little was taken after Gen Jackson ordered it to be paid out to the heads of families, and that but few were brave enough to receive this money:- that some believe it to be a trick in the President, and others were prevented from receiving it for fear of being punished with on hundred strikes on their bare backs. - Until the passage of an act by Template:Unclear in 1834 directing the voice of the Nation in Council assembled to be taken whether their annuity should be paid to the heads of families, to the Chiefs, or in what manner it should be disposed of; and that the Cherokee annuity accumulated and continued on hand; and at last the people voted it, by an almost unanimous voice, into the hands of these same men. The expenses of the nation to meet the services of its officers is comparatively Template:Finall?; but owing to the many difficulties, which it had to encounter for the protection and defense of the rights of the Cherokee people, for several years past, up to the present time, - it is true that is has been accumulated and that debts have been unavoidably incurred.- The first standing Committee elected for