Heikkinen's land, another on Matt Neva's, a third and fourth elsewhere. 4

The earliest form of united action by the Finns here was probably in their getting together to help newcomers put up their cabins. They were also helped in clearing their land and even in harvesting their first crops. Weather conditions called for quick harvesting of grain, and before machinery was available only sufficient manpower assembled together could do it in time. Even when machinery became available and was admitted to be effective by those who had worked on farms in the Dakotas, it was still too expensive for any individual poor Finnish farmer here to contemplate. Cooperative action was the only solution, and with 30 farmers investing $100 each it became possible to buy a thresher to be used by them all in turn, moving from farm to farm, with Henry Saari operating the machine, William Ongalo hovering around it with an oil can, Walfred Pajari acting as mechanic. Efficient use of the thresher still required about a dozen men, and so harvesting was almost a carnival moving from farm to farm. It was only when the pattern of farming began to change and dairy farming grew in importance that farmers began to give up their membership in the combine and the big thresher was used less and less.

Meanwhile, to turn to a more somber note, the Finns did band together for other purposes as well, and their first concern was to establish a cemetery, and that they consecrated in October 1906, with a procession moving slowly down a muddy lane from Nels Nukala's home, with pastors Heikki Anias, Nikolai Haavisto and Jacob Karvala in the lead, to the site on the Itasca road. (Mayme Juntunen and Maria Blixt were the first to be buried there, and hundreds of other Finns were to follow.) Later, some distance removed to the left and the right of the cemetery, were to come the two Finnish churches, the Lutheran and the Unitarian.

The Alango Evangelical Lutheran congregation was established within a very short time, in December 1906. (It was to change its name, in 1924, to the Alango-Field Evangelical Lutheran church when the Finns from that neighboring township joined it.) In 1907 membership already included 74 families. The question of affiliation came up, but the congregation preferred an independent existence and a broadminded one, for pastors of both the National and the Synod churches were welcome to preach from its pulpit. Affiliation with the Suomi Synod did

4. Pioneer of the Wilderness. Alango-Sturgeon-Korvenkyla-Field Region Trail Blazers Souvenir Day. (Mimeographed brochure.)

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