In the spring of 1844, American Fur Company traders Francis Chardon and Alexander Harvey built a trading post near here after hostility forced them to abandon their previous post following their participation the year before in the massacre of many innocent Blackfeet Indians who had come to Fort McKenzie at the mouth of the Marias River to trade. Chardon had a reputation as an able and unscrupulous individual, while Harvey was called one of the most abandoned desperados known to the fur trade. The Blackfeet would not trade at the new fort and instead placed it under siege for several months, stealing the post's horses, killing its cattle, and murdering employees caught alone outside the stockade. With no furs to send downriver to his boss at Fort Union, Chardon lost support, and Alexander Culbertson fired the men, made peace with the Blackfeet, closed Fort Chardon, and burned it to the ground. Trade with the Blackfeet was later re-established at a new post upriver, Chardon and Harvey barely escaped with their lives, and in 1855 Isaac Steven negotiated a treaty near here with the Blackfeet and the Gros Ventres Indians.