However, religious persecution failed as utterly in its purpose in this case as it has and must in all others. Quoting from Mr Eells, “The chiefs did not care if they were deposed, were about to resign, and did not wish to have anything more to do with the ‘Boston’ religion or the agent. Billy Clams was ready, if need be, to suffer as Christ did. He was willing to be a martyr.” Mr Wickersham continues: “While Billy Clams and some of his people publicly abandoned the forms of Shaker religion rather than be banished, yet John Slocum and his people refused to so surrender, and the agent sent out his police and arrested John Slocum, Louis Yowaluch, and two or three more of these people—good, true men—and, loading their limbs with chains, confined them for several weeks in the dirty little single room of a jail at the Puyallup agency, near Tacoma. Their only offense was worship of a different form from that adopted by the agent and his brother. They had broken no law, created no disorder, and yet they suffered ignominious incarceration in a vile dungeon, loaded with chains, at the pleasure of the agent. The Shakers believed in God, in Jesus Christ, in heaven and hell, in temperance, sobriety, and a virtuous life. They abandoned the old Indian religion and all its vices and forms, including the power of the doctors or medicine-men. These medicine-men had a great hold on the Indian mind, and they joined the minister and the agent in their fight on the Shakers, because the Shakers fought them; so that there was seen the unique spectacle of the savage shamanism of the American Indian and the supposed orthodox religion of civilization hand in hand fighting the followers of Jesus Christ.” “Imprisonment, banishment, threats, chains, and the general ill will of the agent and all his employees were visited on these Shakers who continued to practice their forms of worship, and yet they did continue it. In spite of the fact that they occupied a place only half-way between slaves and freemen, and were under the orders of the agent and subject to be harassed and annoyed all the time by him, yet they continued nobly and fearlessly to practice their religion and to worship God and Jesus Christ as they saw fit. To do it, however, they were forced to stay away from the reservations, where the greater number of employees were located, and their churches were built on Mud bay and Oyster bay, far away from the reservations.”