Michigan Legends: Folktales and Lore from the Great Lakes State

The Nain Rouge, Demon of Detroit

   3 The Nain Rouge, Demon of Detroit Let us step through the looking glass to a regal, royal moment long, long ago. It is 1701.We are in a castle named for St. Louis XIV of France in a place called Quebec. It is a beautiful land in New France, which is a vast, new dominion in North America encompassing present-­ day Canada, Michigan, and territory all the way to New Orleans. It is a proud extension of its mother country. People bustle about the banquet hall in this castle on this March 10, just a few months prior to the founding of Detroit.These are distinguished guests bearing the names of France’s best families.One of them—­ indeed,the guest of honor—­ is a gentleman who will land a few months hence at the place we know today as Detroit. His full name, Monsieur Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, Sieur de Douaguet and Mont Desert, rings with melodic French names that will eventually populate the history of this territory, part of which will later be called Michigan. Despite the fact that Cadillac is a notorious scoundrel with many enemies, he fought for his native France as a lieutenant at age twenty-­ one.This earned him a post in New France as commander of Michilimackinac—­ a fort and village in that wild country where the two Great Lakes, Huron and Michigan, share waters. It is a land 4    The Nain Rouge, Demon of Detroit where Indians are as plentiful as the forests and the great white fish in Lake Huron. Cadillac’s interactions with these Indians have been so fruitful that he has been rewarded even further with a grant for a tract of land along the strait (now known as two connections, the Detroit River and the St.Clair River) that connects Lake Erie and Lake Huron . Cadillac has seen this area and proposed it as a perfect site for a fort. From such a fort, he could repel the Iroquois, a confederation of nettlesome tribes, and help fend off the English, who are just as determined to make the New World their own as is France.A fort on this strait could give France better access to the riches further West, as New France colonizes ever more land. All is going beautifully in Cadillac’s life, and he is enjoying the banquet very much.As he and his guests revel in wine and food, a servant asks the host of the banquet to allow an old fortune-­ teller to entertain the guests. The guests welcome such amusement. So the old woman enters the banquet hall, but she hardly looks entertaining . Rather, she looks foreboding. She was later described as “a woman of unusual height, a dark, swarthy complexion, restless, glittering eyes—­ strangely fashioned garments.” She bears a black cat on her shoulder. When asked her name, she responds, “Mere Minique, La Sorciere .” She begins to read palms, the cat seeming to whisper in her ear at key times, and her comments about various guests are so accurate that they draw gasps.There is something“supernatural”about this woman. Now, Cadillac is a proud man steeped in his great accomplishments .When the fortune-­ teller approaches him, he says,“See what you can tell for me of the future; I care not for the past.” As the old sorceress grasps his palm, she pronounces,“Yours is a strange destiny. A dangerous journey you will soon undertake; you will found a great city that one day will have more inhabitants than New France now possesses; many children will nestle around your fireside.” But then the woman reveals a darker message. Because Cadillac insists on selling liquor to Indians (contrary to the advice of the Catholic priests serving these natives), Cadillac will encounter pain and ruin.Indians will storm his colony,the English will threaten The Nain Rouge, Demon of Detroit    5 domination, and the flag of a new nation, which will possess “prosperity that you never in your wildest dreams pictured,” will fly over this new colony he is to establish along the Detroit River. Is there nothing that can waylay this dreadful future, Cadillac asks—­ half believing and half scoffing at this woman’s prophecy. She warns him against his “undue ambition,” but most important, she advises, he must appease the Nain Rouge. The guests inhale at the mention of this creature.They all...