For as long as I can think back I have always watched the westerns that were on television. It was hard to beat a show filled with cowboys and Indians. Even if the shows were in black and white, the programs were full of tons of action. I felt these programs to be so exciting I just could hardly take my eyes off the screen. With all that was going on in one of those shows if you missed a little you probably missed a lot. In the years in which I was tuned into the shows, it was when westerns were at their very peak. 
Now I probably would have watched the shows anyway as they were action packed to say the least and there was something about the cowboys against the Indians out on the wide open prairie but beyond that I could just see these people carrying out life on our frontier. Yes, I said on our frontier. I am talking about the fields and patches where I lived and I played on that ground and worked out on that same land. I am in no way trying to convince you that our farm looked like the prairie or the desert, as they were in no way alike. You get a rope, a tobacco stick, and maybe even a pair of cap pistols and with some imagination; you could turn the barnyard into the Grand Canyon if you have a mind too
I confess that I had as vivid an imagination as any little boy did in the neighborhood. Over the first, few years that I got to go to the fields with my dad and brother I learned a major lesson about where we lived. I think that maybe the first time I was searching the ground for something that was there but did not just jump up at you. My brother took me with him as he began to walk over the soil that had been plowed and worked to a finer texture and Ben wanted to be looking near where there were chips of flint stone. At first, I had no idea just what Ben was looking for but then he reached down to the soil quickly and snatched up a piece of rock. At first, I did not get a good look at what Ben had grabbed but then he smiled and unclutched his hand to present to me a real arrowhead. Ben was holding a grayish colored piece of flint that was in the shape of almost three inches in size.
Now was when fiction met up with fact. Ben explained it to me that the arrowhead had been resting in the soil for hundreds or maybe even a thousand years just waiting for us to find it. The thought that I was holding a real arrowhead seemed to be the exact item that brought forward in me the curiosity of finding these items. From that day forward I seemed to not only like looking for them but I was good at finding quite a few. I do not know exactly why I can spot them but I do. At the end of a day, I would head to the house and as I entered the house my mom made sure we emptied our pockets so the wrong items wouldn’t get in the laundry. In my case, most times mom would look over one or maybe two arrowheads or just pieces that remained from broken ones. Never let it be said that what boys have in their pockets would never not be interesting or in my case, I collected quite a collection over the years.
As we farmed tobacco from farm to farm, I also found coins. I picked up half dimes and Spanish coins and once down on Maple Creek I found a Portuguese silver coin dated 1772. I always set the ages of the items I found by this one as it was minted before the Unites States had declared Independence. Over the years, I have wondered just who had walked in the same path I was walking. To find these items in places I would never have thought of only piqued my curiosity who was the people who went before us. I know that as I was growing I of course had watched the show about Daniel Boone and of course, I knew that he have traveled up and down the Ohio River and on both sides of the river. With that in mind when I might find a flint or a coin I would think to myself or speak it out that I bet I had found something that had been Daniel Boones. I enjoyed searching for the old relics but if I could attach a famous name to a possession, it just made it even more fun to be collecting.
Let me be clear about doing this collecting. Traveling the Ohio Valley, you will find many folks who have a cigar box full of the arrowheads. If you could get a look at the collections I would guess they range anywhere from having a few flints to having huge amounts that might fill up a museum. With all those who have collected, here is the interesting part. Many more folks have never yet found one arrowhead and probably never will. Therefore, if you ever do find one treasure it as they are special and the last that I heard was that the Indians are not making arrowheads again.
Here all of this time we have been standing on rare treasurer. If you have been fortunate enough to discover some of these items, you are the lucky one. Not only have you found something rare we have grown up with but also we get to observe it and study it. Most people are only going to see artifacts at a museum where you have handled them and know that they are a real item. Whenever you look at an arrowhead, remember that was probably lost when an Indian was hunting for his meal and if you found the arrowhead, he lost it and and then used another one to finish his shot. Also the odds that the Indian was shooting at another person are less likely than losing the arrowhead.
Rick Houser grew up on a farm near Moscow in Clermont County and loves to share stories about his youth and other topics. If you are interested in reading more of his stories they can be found in his books ‘There are Places to Remember” and’ Memories ARE from the Heart.” He may be reached at houser734@yahoo.com or mail to P.O. Box 213 Bethel, Ohio 45106.