The Nain Rouge of Detroit

The little red man has walked with Detroit since the beginning. The story says Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who founded the city in 1701, struck the creature with his cane and was ruined for it, and that the Nain Rouge has been glimpsed before the city’s worst days ever since, the massacre at Bloody Run, the fire of 1805, the unrest of 1967. It is one of the oldest continuously told urban legends in America, older than the United States, and Detroit has made peace with it: every spring the city holds the Marche du Nain Rouge and drives him out again for another year.