As legend would have it, or at least how the story goes from
Marie Caroline Watson Hamlin's 1884 book, Legends of Le Détroit,
on the evening of the 10th of March, 1701, a lively banquet took
place in the castle of St. Louis, Quebec. The celebratory dinner
host was the governor of "New France," Hector Louis de Callière.
The guest of honor was Monsieur Antoine La Mothe Cadillac, Sieur
de Douaguet, and Mont Désert, who had just been granted a
commission of Commandant along with 15 square acres to locate a
colony and build a fort wherever he saw fit at "le Détroit," or
"The Straits." At the height of the merriment, the dinner party
received a strange and mysterious visitor. A peculiar-looking
woman called "Mère Minique, La Sorcière" offered to read the
guests' fortunes. She would astound the officials with details of
their lives she could not possibly know, yet La Mothe Cadillac
remained skeptical, and against the advice of Mère Minique, bade
her tell him of his future. She told him he would found a great
city, but his policies and pride would cause his ruin, and his
colony would be the scene of strife and bloodshed. Above all, she
warned, to appease the Nain Rouge, beware of offending him! It
would be six years of profitable growth for the settlement before
Cadillac would be able to temp his fate. While on an evening
stroll with his wife, the red devilish imp crossed their path as
prophesied. And it takes no sibyl to guess that Cadillac let his
impetuous temper get the better of him, and he lashed out at the
goblin with a curse and his cane. The rest, it is said, is
history, but certainly, history mixed with fact and folklore. So
was the Nain Rouge nothing more than a cautionary tale of greed
and undue ambition? Maybe an imagined scapegoat for the woes of
this famed city or a tulpa-like harbinger of doom? Could it be
that the Nain Rouge was, and is, an actual supernatural entity as
possibly described in First Nations legends? If one is
entertaining this last option, or when in doubt, perhaps it's
always best to respect the specter, yet remember that our fate is
always in our own hands.
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