This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac was a rich man. A very rich man. Like, super rich. That isn’t what he’s famous for though - what he did that got his name in the history books, well one of the things he did to get his name in the history books, was building Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701. Today, that area is simply known as Detroit. Also of interest, to me at least, is that good old Antoine became the governor of Louisiana in 1710, even though he didn’t move there until 1713. Today, some people hold Antoine in high regard, though by most accounts, he was a real jerk.
All of that is fine and dandy, but this isn’t a history site! What do we care about Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac and his founding Detroit! No one cares! I know, and you’re pretty right, but just stick with me.
The jerk that was Antoine, who was very very rich, died very very poor. How did that happen? How did he lose his massive fortune?
Turns out Antoine ran foul of the Nain Rouge.
The bad times for Antoine started in 1701, shortly after he started building Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. Antoine met a fortune teller who warned him to beware the Nain Rouge, a fellow French immigrant. According to the tale, the Nain Rouge came to the Americas by way of Normandy. The creature stands three feet tall and wears a red suit with furry black boots. His skin is the same red as his suit, and his eyes glow red - the guy likes red, I guess.
Antoine laughed it off, but the fortune teller warned him again that a red imp filled with great pride and great envy, had made the area Antoine was building in his home, and the Nain Rouge didn’t want neighbors. According to the fortune teller, building Detroit may one day pay off, but the journey to success would be long. Longer than anyone could imagine.
Antoine laughed it off again. Then he met the Nain Rouge.
The beat appeared outside Antoine’s home, dancing about and causing a ruckus. Antoine chased the thing away with a stick pretty sure that, even though the fortune teller knew of the monster, there was no way anything else would go wrong.
But, like I said, he died penniless, and it isn’t like Detroit has been a land of great prosperity.
As the story goes, the Nain Rouge appears only before a tragedy, as some British soldiers learned. On July 30th, 1763, as the British prepared for a surprise attack on Fort Detroit, which had been taken over by Chief Pontiac of the Odawa people some weeks earlier, a few soldiers reportedly spotted the Nain Rouge scampering about. The next day, when the British forces went in for their surprise attack, they found that Chief Pontiac and his crew were ready and waiting. Dozens of British soldiers were killed before the battle ended. Today kids learn about this fight in school where it is called the Battle of Bloody Run, in reference to the creek near the fort running red from the blood of the dead for days. What isn’t included in the textbooks are the reports of the Nain Rouge dancing in and around the creek for days after the battle.
The Nain Rouge seemed to to vanish for the next few decades before popping up again in 1805. Many citizens of Detroit reported seeing a red dwarf darting through the streets in the days leading up to June 11th, when a stable fire would spread across the city, destroying nearly everything that had been built. Amazingly, no one died.
The next sighting of the Nain Rouge was during the War of 1812 when General William Hull claimed that a red dwarf came out of the fog and attacked him. Shortly afterwards, Hull surrendered Fort Detroit to the British without a fight. Hull was certain that he and his 2000 men were outnumbered by the Brits and the Native Americans helping them. It would be a year before Michigan became part of the United States again. In 1814, Hull was court martialed for failing to even bother fighting for Michigan. Though he was sentenced to death, James Madison remitted the sentence.
Hull spent the next decade trying to get people to see his side of the story, but he would die being remembered as a coward.
With Hull, the Nain Rouge seemed to learn that he liked attacking people more than just dancing about. This more aggressive style would carry into 1872 when Jane Dacy would enter a dark room in her home only to be confronted by the Nain Rouge. The Nain Rouge jumped at Jane, causing her to faint. Jane would spend the next week bedridden and frightened. Oddly, there would be no tragic event following this appearance of the imp, leading some to wonder if this was indeed the Nain Rouge.
For the next 100 years there would be more sightings, and more attacks. The look of the Nain Rouge changed with the times - his suit staying in fashion and his face changing to look less human and more like a baboon. Still, the creature was always red, always short, and always angry.
Then came 1967 and the most prominent day for the red dwarf.
On Saturday, July 22nd, police received multiple reports of a angry dwarf dressed in red all around Detroit. As some police chased down calls of the Nain Rouge, others prepared for a raid on The Blind Pig, an unlicensed after hours bar on 12th Street. On Sunday, July 23rd, at 3:45AM, the raid began. It would end five days later.
The police believed that the Blind Pig would have only a few patrons, maybe ten tops. What they found was over 80 people celebrating the return of two Vietnam vets. Undeterred, the Detroit police decided to arrest everyone. The police brought the revelers at the Blind Pig out onto the street to wait for more paddy wagons. The commotion brought out onlookers who began to yell at the police. Walter Scott III threw a bottle at a police officer, and others joined in.
Outnumbered, the police made a quick escape, but the people of 12th Street didn’t go home. Instead, the began breaking store windows, grabbing what they could. As the sun rose, the crowd grew larger, and the looting moved off of 12th Street, spreading through the neighborhood. Detroit police came back, this time with state police backing them up, but instead of dispersing the crowd, it only exacerbated the situation. The looting turned into a full scale riot. By the afternoon, fires broke out - there were so many people in the streets that firefighters were unable to reach the areas they were needed. Governor George Romney called in the Michigan National Guard, but because it was a Sunday, it would take hours for sufficient manpower to be gathered up.
The rioting continued into the night with no end in sight. The police used makeshift jails to hold arrested rioters, but as those filled up quickly, they quit arresting looters and instead began to film them for later arrest. Willie Horton, who grew up on 12th Street and now played for the Detroit Tigers, entered the riot in his baseball uniform, got on the roof of a car and, with a megaphone, pleaded with the rioters to return to their homes.
No one listened.
On Monday, more state police arrived, but it was clear they would not be enough to quell the riot. Over 400 buildings were burning and police were dealing with over 230 incident calls an hour. The city overrun, Romney requested military assistance from President Johnson. Johnson held off sending in troops, believing that before he could, Romney would need to declare Detroit in a state of insurrection. As Romney and Johnson argued over who had to do what, Congressman John Conyers drove into the riot and attempted to do what Willie Horton couldn’t. Instead of ignoring him as they did with Horton, the rioters attacked Conyers, throwing bottles and rocks at him.
Just before midnight, President Johnson authorized the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne to enter Detroit. It would take them another 48 hours to end the riot. When all was said and done, 43 people were dead, another 1,189 were injured, and over 7,200 were arrested. The city of Detroit was once more in ruins, with more than 2,000 buildings destroyed.
Today, the 12th Street Riot is looked at as the beginning of Detroit’s downfall, although the signs of serious problems were evident well before July 23, 1967. Unemployment in the city was high, double digits high, and housing costs were rising. The “Big 3”, Ford, GM, and Chrysler, had already begun to move manufacturing out of Detroit and into other states with lower taxes. The loss of tax revenue lead to the public schools of Detroit becoming underfunded. At the time of the riot, funding per pupil in Detroit was $193 compared to $225 per pupil in the suburbs.
Whenever the fall of Detroit began, the prophecy of the Nain Rouge indeed came true - the city that Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac began to build in 1701 has yet to fully recover from the events of 1967. Some claim that the Nain Rouge is still out there waiting for the next tragedy to befall Detroit, though it has been twenty years since the last recorded sighting. Since 2010, Detroit has held an annual costume parade called Marche du Nain Rouge. The parade ends with a ceremony that banishes the red dwarf from the city by burning him in effigy. Will this ceremony help heal the scars of Detroit? Only time will tell.