May 12, 2011 by Amy Elliott Bragg
Detroit & New Orleans: Le Loup Garou
Another slice of shared history between Detroit and New Orleans, since we were just there. Last week we talked about Cadillac’s time in the bayou.
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“Madame de Ber says there is no such thing as a loup garou, that a person cannot be a man and a wolf at the same time.”
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit*
“That it was the Loup Garou or wehr-wolf Archange had seen he did not doubt, and he recalled all the traditions of his youth, how the dreaded monster had stolen young children; sometimes a young man would be inveigled away into the forest and never heard of afterwards, and his fate conjectured by some, having seen the wolf dressed in his clothes.”
In Detroit, the loup garou — the fancy French colonial werewolf — haunts our old history books.
In New Orleans, they have a loup garou at THE ZOO. No joke.
What will it take to convince the Detroit Zoo to acquire one of these creepy, rare, French-y creatures?
*We REALLY need to talk about this book, which I just discovered in an attempt to learn more about the loup-garou. Amanda Minnie Douglas wrote a whole series of “Little Girl in the Old City” books – one of the earliest series of historical fiction for young women. Other “Old” cities including Quebec, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Salem, Boston and Washington. Ms. Douglas was also a literary scenestress in Newark, NJ. And she invented things. And I love her.
Thanks to some able eBay searching, I just bought this one and A Little Girl in Old New Orleans. So we should have more to discuss soon.