James Kipp, a Canadian of German descent born in 1788 and remembered in the twilight of his years for his fort-building experience and vast knowledge of the Upper Missouri country and its people, is credited with constructing Fort Clark and its upriver sister post, Fort Union. His command of the Mandan language was equally important to American Fur Company interests, and after Prince Maximilian's party arrived at Fort Clark in November 1833, Maximilian noted that James Kipp, the director, spoke the Mandan language better than the interpreter Belhumeur. During forty years on the Missouri River, Kipp became a fixture in the fur trade, and artists, explorers, and scientists visiting Fort Clark and related Missouri River posts frequently mentioned his role in business and other matters; at Fort Berthold on July 15, 1851, the Swiss artist Rudolph Friederich Kurz wrote that Kipp installed him as clerk and had him compile a dictionary of the Mandan dialect according to Kipp's pronunciation for Colonel Mitchell. The life of the bourgeois, or head clerk, centered on managing the affairs and activities of a trading establishment, keeping accounts, and controlling costs for fort upkeep, employee salaries, and skins and furs to increase profit for himself and his agents, as Kurz recorded on November 22, 1851. Francis A. Chardon followed a path like that of many mid-level fur trade men of French extraction in the early nineteenth century, entering the Lower Missouri trade by 1820 and serving among the Osages; as was the custom of the country, he had Native American wives, including Tchon-su-mons-ka, or Sandy Bar, whose portrait George Catlin painted in 1832 on the Upper Missouri. Chardon's journal at Fort Clark, covering daily life at the post from 1834 to 1839, remains one of the rare glimpses into fur-trade history, and he was buried in an unmarked grave at Fort Pierre Choteau.