Red-slipped pottery and a multiterrace platform mound at Trempealeau, Wisconsin, indicate the presence of an early Mississippian outpost in the upper Mississippi Valley ca. A.D. 1000. Trempealeau apparently represents a Mississippian elite site-unit intrusion from the American Bottom, and it probably served as a nodal point of early contact between Cahokia and peoples of the upper Mississippi Valley. By establishing a mound center at Trempealeau, its founders not only secured access to material goods but also facilitated the flow of information from the northern Mississippi Valley to the newly emerged elites in the American Bottom.