One of my farovite haunts as a young lad was the creek that ran through my grandfather’s farm where my dad and uncles grew up.  It was called Big Loughery because it was wider and deeper than Little Loughery and both were pronounced lock’ree.  I’ll explain later.
     My friend and I would spend hours exploring the woodlands near the creek pretending to be the only white men ever to have set foot there, knowing full well that the timber was second cut but not knowing that a raging battle once occurred nearby.
     Big Loughery was a wonderful creek with areas of shallows that shimmered in the sunlight that filtered through the sycamore trees.  There were deeper pools where Grandma used to catch sunfish to feed the family when squirrel or rabbit was not on the night’s menu.  She caught them close to where the creek’s namesake lost his scalp.
     Big Loughery overflowed  each Spring but it was supposed to.  That’s what created what we called the “bottom.”  Each spring new soil was deposited so corn could be planted every year and crop rotation was not necessary.
     Moreover, every Spring plowing brought up another handful of Indian arrowheads in perfect condition for this  was the former hunting grounds of the Miami, Delaware, Potwatomi and Shawnee tribes.  I later traded four cigar boxes full of arrowheads for a switchblade knife.
     Several beautiful bridges spanned Big Loughery, including the nearby Watson-Skeen–a covered structure built in 1884.   It was almost 80 years old when an ice floe knocked it of its east piling and sent it sailing down the creek, floating around several bends like a house boat until it was battered to pieces.
   It was August of 1781 and native Americans had taken sides with the British during the Revolutionary War.  Indian uprisings were rampant in Indiana and Colonel Archibold Lochry  (for whom the creek is named and nobody knows about the misspelling, not even the county’s historical society) and 400 men were sent south to quell the uprisings and to the southward flow of the Brithish.  To make a long story short he was captured, popped with a tomahawk and scalped while still alive.  Forty-two of his men were killed, and for what?  The war was won in New England.  A huge battle was fought here and Indians and whites both nearly starved.
     When my grandfather died the farm was sold at auction to some city folks.  They don’t farm it.  They don’t plow the bottom.  I stopped by recently and asked if I could wander down to the creek for a visit and they graciously said I could.  While passing through the bottom I found three Indian arrowheads hidden in the weeds.  I put them in my pocket.   I was almost back to my pickup when I turned around, went back to the bottom and replaced the arrowheads where I found them.  They didn’t belong to me.