The Nodena phase was a collection of villages (see Eaker site) along the Mississippi River between the Missouri Bootheel and Wapanocca Lake.

In the early 1540s, the Spanish Hernando de Soto Expedition is believed to have visited several sites in the Nodena phase, which is usually identified as the Province of Pacaha.

[7][8] Nodena people were part of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, an extensive religious and trade network that brought chert, whelk shells, and other exotic goods to the site.

The site was a 15 acres (6 ha) palisaded village on a horseshoe bend of the Mississippi River about 5 miles (8 km) east of Wilson, Arkansas.

The peoples of Casqui and Pacaha were in a state of perpetual war with one another, and most large sites throughout the area in this time period had this type of defensive palisade.

It was buff colored, contains large fragments of ground mussel shell as a tempering agent, and isn't as smooth and polished as other varieties.

The Nodena phase people put a bowl and a bottle into a grave with the bodies, usually of the finer variety of pottery.

Shapes and decoration were varied in the mortuary pottery, from brightly colored abstract spiral designs, to elaborate effigy vessels depicting human heads, animals, and hunters and their prey.

The people of Nodena were intensely involved in maize agriculture, as well as other food crops originating in the Americas, such as beans, squash, sunflowers and gourds.

[7] The hunting of whitetail deer, squirrel, rabbit, turkey, and mallard was practiced as well as fishing for alligator gar, catfish, drum, and mussels.

But by the time of later European contact in the 1670s and the beginning of the historic period, the area was occupied by the Dhegiha Siouan speaking Quapaw.

Attempts have been made to connect pottery styles and words from the de Soto narratives with historic tribes, but have so far been unsuccessful.

[4][10] The Hampson Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas exhibits an archeological collection of early American aboriginal artifacts from the Nodena site.