finding .htaccess

I am trying to set my site homepage to be different from the director. For this I need to be able to move the .htaccess and index files but I do not seem to be able to locate the .htaccess file. From within my FTP prog I have already tried ‘force show hidden files’ but it still does not appear. Any suggestions? Or do i even need to worry about it as i currently do not use permalinks