forests had covered an area now known as Paddock and Red Eye townships, which once were camping sites for the Indians who used to gather every six months under Sebeka's pines `at the waters flowing through the plain.' The Indian needed forests, too, but in a different way from his successor, the white man, who, armed with his axe, brought into these forest regions a totally new and different civilization, with new and demanding requirements. He put up his log cabins, but in addition to them, also sawmills and railroads. He brought with him his oxen and the fire-spewing iron horse. And he wanted to get his hands into the earth, over which ancient pines whispered in the breeze. It meant a death knell for the forests, and with that doom the disappearance of an ancient, nomadic way of life. Even before the beginning of our century, the age of the forest had come to an end, and the axe was replaced by the mattock, in the hands of men sparse of speech, independent, broad-shouldered and strong, who, when they spoke, spoke a strange musical tongue, the language of the Finns."

Sebeka

Along the border of Otter Tail County, east of Paddock, lies Red Eye Township, of whose religious activity mention has already been made. It was here that Sebeka was established in the 1880s. It was first a place where logs were stored: in the winter they were hauled to the shores of the Red Eye River, and in the spring they were floated down to the Crow Wing River. Their final destination, the Motley sawmill, lay in the neighboring county. Sebeka, in 1891, had one single general store, which also housed the post office. The completion of the railroad brought a big expansion to the lumbering industry, and Sebeka in turn began to grow.

In Sebeka, as elsewhere, business fluctuations caused grave problems among the Finns, and recurring hard times remained as dark memories : the 'Cleveland era', particularly, is remembered because the price of butter is said to have fallen to 9c the pound, eggs to 5c the dozen, while the market for meat disappeared altogether, and if one offered it to a store the storekeeper laughed, `who could afford to buy it?' It was impossible to borrow money. Professor Kolehmainen wrote in the Työväen Osuustoimintalehti (16 March 1946) that among the Finns had grown the firm conviction that a Democratic party government meant bad times, unemployment, dangerous flirtation with

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