As a result of their reckless management, Chardon and Harvey had by this time ruined the trade with the Blackfeet tribes. In this emergency the Company turned to Culbertson, acknowledged their error in removing him from Fort McKenzie, and besought him to return and restore things to their old-time condition. Culbertson went back in the summer of 1844, abandoned and burned Fort Chardon, and established a new post twelve miles above the modern Fort Benton. The fort was built on the right bank of the Missouri, and was named Fort Lewis, in honor of the great explorer, Captain Meriwether Lewis. On his way up from Fort Union this season Culbertson was accompanied by Jacob Berger, James Lee, and Malcolm Clark. Clark had served at Fort McKenzie five years before. He was a noted frontier character of good family connections, an unsuccessful student at the West Point Military Academy, a man of fine physical presence, and possessed of a bold and desperate character, which brought to his name the stigma of more than one crime.[39] Clark and his companions seem to have plotted the murder or severe punishment of Alexander Harvey; for when Harvey came down from Fort Chardon to meet the boat, he was attacked by Clark and Lee and barely escaped with his life. He fled to the post, barricaded himself, induced the inmates to stand by him, and would not admit even Culbertson without a guarantee of personal safety. He then closed up his affairs at the post, left the Company’s service, went down the river, and soon after became senior member in the opposition firm of Harvey, Primeau & Co. He returned to the upper river, built a small post near the mouth of Shonkin Creek, and did a fair business for several years, when he sold out to his old employers. [Sidenote: BLACKFEET TRADE RESTORED.] With Chardon and Harvey away, Culbertson soon won back the trade of the Blackfeet. The site of Fort Lewis, however, proved unsatisfactory. The valley of the Teton River, a tributary of the Marias, which flowed parallel with the Missouri for many miles, was a favorite camping ground of the Indians. Fort Lewis was a long way off, and across the Missouri from this valley. Accordingly, in the spring of 1846 the post was dismantled, moved down the river, and set up in the fine open bottom where the village of Fort Benton now stands. [Sidenote: FORT BENTON FOUNDED.]