There are few venues where a parody of Old Testament prophecy delivered by a professor against his school’s arch-nemesis could draw raucous applause and admiration for decades. Of those few, the Monon Bell Chapel at Wabash just happens to be one.
A few years ago, while I was researching Monon Bell traditions for The Bachelor, I heard about a speech that then-Professor of Religion Hall Peebles H’63 delivered in Pioneer Chapel the Thursday before the Bell game. Peebles — an expert in the Bible’s Old Testament and so powerful of an orator that students nicknamed him “Yahweh,” the Hebrew name for God — spoke against the “Tribe of Dan” and apparently had the whole school in tears of laughter. This year, I set out to find the spoof’s text and uncover more about the occasion.
Beginning in the 1970s and continuing until near the present day, faculty members were recruited to speak at the Monon Bell pep rally in the Chapel. Many fixtures of campus in the last 50 years took the stage, including Professor of Speech Joe O’Rourke, whose famous “Depauw to Hell — get the Bell!” line was one of a number of great turns of phrase employed by the faculty members. But Peebles’ “Tribe of Dan” oration was especially popular. John Kerezy ’77 wrote a book on Wabash’s athletic history from 1977 to 1982, and though he wasn’t in the Chapel that day, he has long been familiar with the speech.
“It got out almost immediately how great Hall Peeble’s speech was,” said Kerezy. “What was fascinating about that speech was that Stan Parrish, the football coach at the time, just absolutely loved it. He asked Peebles for a copy of it, and he actually put it on the wall at his office. Even years after he left Wabash, wherever he went to coach, he kept that on his wall because he just loved it so much.”
Kerezy is fairly certain that the parody dates to the 1981 season, Parrish’s second to last with Wabash. Though the Little Giants went a phenomenal 42–3–1 under Parrish — who went on to win a National Championship with Michigan, where he was Tom Brady’s quarterbacks coach, and a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — Wabash actually lost that year’s game 14–21.
Besides a sharp intellect and good sense of humor, Peebles may have had other sources of inspiration for the “Tribe of Dan.”
“He could have been referencing thefts of the bell that occurred in 1978 and 1979,” said Digital Archives Librarian Matthew Meyer. “The 1979 theft is interesting because it occurred in August when the school year began, and the Bell wasn’t returned until November. It also caused damage to the floor and the Bell’s stand, but the Bell itself was unharmed. We have a copy of the receipt listing the damage that was given to DePauw in our collection.”
Whether he was inspired by the Little Giants’ prowess on the gridiron, the Dannies bungling heist, a supreme knowledge of the Old Testament or some combination of all of those, what’s certain is Peebles’ “Tribe of Dan” went down in history. And it’s not hard to see why.
The following is an excerpt from Peebles’ iconic speech
“For three transgressions of the Dannies and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,” says Wallace of the Wabash.
Because they have coveted their neighbors’ Bell, they shall never possess the Bell, and it shall remain in stronger hands than theirs all the days of their lives, and they shall hear its sounds ringing in their ears, and they shall lust after it, but they shall be forever frustrated.
Because they have defaced their neighbors’ campus, they shall fall before Stan Parrish and his mighty men, and they shall be powerless before the run, before the pass, and before the field goal, and they shall see many points on the scoreboard, but none shall be theirs, and they shall hear many cheers, but none shall praise them.
Because they have broken their neighbors’ windows, their own conceit will be broken. And because they have stolen their neighbors’ banner, their tiger’s tail will be cut in pieces. And because they have dared to oppose the sons of Wabash in open combat, they shall be cut off out of the land of the living, and their name shall perish from the face of the earth.
But with the sons of Wabash it is not so. The sons of Wabash will possess the goals of the Dannies, and the mighty men of Parrish will trample the faces of the Dannies in the mud, and the hosts of Wabash will call their team blessed. And even even the Dannies will remember that giants trod once again upon the earth that day.
And the sons of Wabash will possess the women of the Dannies, and will bear them triumphantly away from Greencastle to a fair land to the north, a land flowing with beer, yea with much fine beer and with other pleasures that gladden the hearts of men, and there they shall dwell securely and in happiness all the days of their lives. And the sons of Wabash shall leave the shadow of their own vines, and their own fig trees, only once a year, as they travel triumphantly to and from Phoenix City, and as they pass a brown spot on the Indiana earth, they will say, “that once was the Dannies.”