Gumbo Point Archeological Site in Saline County, Missouri, near the Missouri River north of Malta Bend, has yielded artifacts since excavations began in 1939 that point to cultural contact between the Little Osage and the Missouri, or Missouria, tribes. Archaeologists value it not only for recovered objects but also for what its riverside location may reveal about Native life there. The site is linked to a shift, possibly by 1714, of some Missouria from the nearby Utz site on the Pinnacles to the Petitesas or Teteseau Plain, where access to Fort Orleans and later Missouri River traders was easier. In the later eighteenth century, pressures including attacks, disease, and colonial encroachment drove the Missouria west, and by 1794 survivors had joined other tribes.