Quipana

Quipana lay in the Arkansas river country, where valleys cut through the Ouachita uplands and connected the southeastern woodlands with the western plains. Before European expansion, Indigenous communities grew maize and other crops, hunted deer and bison on the prairie edges, and traded salt, flint and shell across a wide area. Settlements varied in size and political organization, while kinship and ceremonial ties joined neighbouring peoples. Hernando de Soto's expedition passed through this region in 1541, and its chroniclers listed the places they reached after Tula, though the record gives Quipana only in passing. Later French trade along the Arkansas and Mississippi brought new partners and epidemics that altered the balance among communities.