Finns : there was more than an abundance of wild rabbits in these forests, but only the Finns seemed to use them for food. Their hunting of rabbits assumed major proportions when a New York Mills shopkeeper, Olli Pajari, offered to pay 5c per rabbit, for within a few days Pajari had a whole wagon full of them from Paddock. For a long time after that, others than Finns used to say, when they saw a rabbit in the woods, "Go to Red Eye, there you'll get eaten up."

For these pioneers the procurement of a team of oxen meant a big step forward: "They were strong, even if they were slow, and they got their orders in English : when you hollered sii, they turned slowly to the right, and when you yelled haa, they turned to the left. Plowing with oxen was slow work, but they did their work well. Later, when horses replaced them, the oxen were slaughtered and eaten, and their hides were tanned and made into shoes," related Benjamin Pantsari, one of the early pioneers, who for almost half a century kept a lending library of books eagerly read by his fellow Finns.

Another account, by Anni Vappu Siltala, tells that a Finnish school was built in Paddock to teach the children the language of their fathers. At one time one of the teachers was a man named Sandström, who had received a good academic education in Finland and. who also knew Swedish. At another time the Finnish Sunday school was taught by one Antti Ruotsala, a former soldier, and if he had stayed on he would probably have turned even the girls into soldiers, shouting out military commands in Russian as he did. There was then, at least a mixture of languages if not much solid learning.

However, conditions have changed. A new generation, modern demands, different tastes, all were signs of the changes which the old pioneers marveled at and secretly feared because, with the younger generation seeking its livelihood in bigger towns, the lands cleared with such sweat of the brow threatened to revert to forest. "On the other hand, who knows?" said Benjamin Pantsari; "perhaps none of it will prove to have been fruitless, at least none of the communal projects, which in the hands of the younger generation far exceed any of the hopes and expectations of us old ones."

Religious activity in this area north of New York Mills, in the townships of Blowers, Butler and Paddock in Otter Tail County, is so closely tied with that in Red Eye Township in Wadena County and Runeberg in Becker County that it must all be considered as a part of one picture. Of the churches built, the first one was the Apostolic Lutheran in Runeberg (in 1895?) a building

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