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various claims arising under that instrument, it is impossible, within a reasonable period of time, to obtain from them any particular or detailed information respecting any of the various matters upon which they acted. The Commissioners kept no journal. There is no connection, by references, between the different books relating to the same class of business, & none between them and the original papers; and these, of all the various descriptions, with a few exceptions, are mixed up together without classification or arrangement. In illustration of these remarks, take, for instance, the case of a claim against an Indian: the papers in support of it were presented to the Commissioners; if allowed, either in whole or in part, the name of the Indian and of the claimant, the character of the claim and the amount allowed, were noted in what the Commissioners called a judgement book, of which there are two: from this the amount was transferred to the books (eight in number) in which the accounts with the Indians (individual claimants) were kept. The Indian against whom the claim was presented, was here debited with the amount, and it was deducted from what had been allowed him for his claims. These judgement books have no index, and if it were necessary to ascertain what amount any particular person had received for claims against a number of Indians, it could only be done either by taking up the account books and going through them one by one, account by account, to the number of about 8,000, or by pursuing a similarly tedious and laborious examination of the judgement books. The