The following is from the book, Taming Texas, by Stephen L. Moore:
...The
Indians waited until everyone had gone to bed for the night,
watching as the men took to their own room. Apparently, some of the men
had just checked on their children for a goodnight "chat" and were
retiring back to their own room at the moment of attack. The women,
children and Patsy, the Edens family servant, were across the dogtrot
in the other room with many of the guns. By the light of a bright moon,
the Indians slipped up beside the house quietly before erupting with
horrible "war whoops and yells fiendish..."
Several
Indians guarded the door to the room occupied by the men while several
others burst into the other room with the women and children. With
tomahawks and scalping knives in hand, the Indians proceeded to butcher
their helpless inmates. The women cried out for help, but they were
prevented from escaping and the men were prevented from coming to their
rescue. According to one Texas historian, escape was prevented by "one
powerful and hideous demon, guarding the doorway by spreading his arms
and legs from side to side and grasping the lintels with his hands, all
the while yelling and gloating rapturously over the bloody, sickening
scene of death wrought within."
All accounts seem to
agree that the Indians attacked the grown women before moving on to the
children. Lucinda Edens Madden, wife of James Madden, was savagely
attacked. One chop of the tomahawk severed her collarbone while a
second cut through two ribs near her spine. After a third blow opened a
horrible gash in her back, Mrs. Madden "fell senseless upon the floor
and was abandoned as dead." With great physical force, the barbaric
savages spared no mercy on the other women.
Captain
Sadler's wife Mary was among the first to die. She and her stepmother,
Sarah Murchison, and Mrs. John Edens quickly fell to the tomahawks and
scalping knives while the raging Indians slashed into the other women
and their defenseless children. One of the first published accounts of
the Edens-Madden Massacre relates the horrible fate of one of the women
slaughtered after Lucinda Madden had passed out. "Another lady was
tomahawked and fell dead into the fireplace, her life's blood flowing
so profusely as to extinguish the flames, and leave the fiends to
complete the slaughter in semi-darkness."
In the
crowded women's room of the Edens home, the wooden floors became
saturated with blood as the occupants were brutally massacred. Three
women, including Mary Sadler, were already dead. The Indians went after
the children and remaining women with their tomahawks, and Nancy Madden
wife of Robert Madden of Captain Sadler's company, suffered a shot
through her ear and a tomahawk wound in the back of her shoulder.
In
the wild melee of attacking Indians and screaming children, Nancy
Madden somehow managed to crawl from the room and burst into the men's
room where she "fell exhausted by fright and loss of blood."
The men, perhaps thinking they could be of no help, attempted an escape.
...There
were a large number of children in the women's room, and only two
survived. Two of John Edens' daughters, Emily and Caledonia Edens, were
killed as were two of his grandsons, Robert and Seldon Madden, both
sons of James and Lucinda Madden. A fifth child, Nancy Madden's
three-year-old daughter Mary, was also killed. A sixth child, Mary
Sadler's infant daughter Sophia, is believed to have been killed and
her body left in the house, although many sources do not list her.
Noted Texas historian Louis W. Kemp, in a biographical sketch of
William Sadler obtained from the Texas State Library, noted that "Mrs.
Sadler and her infant child were killed by Indians October 18, 18[8]."
Prior
to fleeing from their scene of butchery, the Indians set fire to the
Edens home. They ripped into the bedding and emptied the feathers into
the room to fuel the blaze, then started the fire by spreading the
remaining coals from the fireplace in the center of the room. In the
confusion of flying feathers, rapidly spreading fire, and Indians
busily scalping, severely wounded Lucinda Madden regained consciousness
long enough to escape from the room shortly before the Indians
departed. As she later related to her grandson, she crawled through the
legs of an Indian guard at the door who was wrapped up in the
excitement of the moment.
According to this same
account, Lucinda found the strength to pull herself far out of the view
of the Indians to save her own life.
Crawling to the
corner of a fence, she lay there, bleeding, while the Indians set fire
to the buildings and destroyed the entire group of houses with the
exception of one little out building. As she lay in this fence corner,
my grandfather leaped the fence right by her, hotly pursued by the
Indians, but she was not seen by either. My grandfather escaped into
the woods. After the fire had died down and the Indians [had] gone, by
grandmother pulled herself into this little building which had been
left, and lay there alone all night. I have heard from her own lips the
remarkable statement that she "never slept better in all her life," a
fact probably due to the severe loss of blood.
She
would not be the only survivor from among the women and children,
however. Lucinda Madden's four-year-old son Balis Erls Madden observed
his mother's slithering past the Indian guard and followed suit. Young
Balis slipped through, apparently unnoticed, and ran off behind the
slaves' quarters to hide all night in what he described as a "hog bed."
The young boy remained safe here because the Indians did not molest the
negro slaves.
The Indian stole the guns from the
women's room and took all but one of the horses tied up near the Edens
home. Some of their own inferior guns were discarded in favor of those
of the settlers before the attackers retired in the direction of Fort
Houston. One account claims some of the children may have been carried
off by the Indians, while another states that some had their brains
smashed out against the side of the home before being tossed into the
fire.
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