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The tale of his tieng 50 Muslim terrorists up to poles in the Phillipines and executing forty-nine of them with bullets dipped in pig fat is not necessarily an urban legend at all. Snopes themselves do not refute it...they simply indicate that they can find no clear evidence either way, but do not discount that it may have happened.

It's been a persistent story since 19911 when it occurred.

In the "Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing" by Frank E. Vandiver, Frank E. he indicates this:

Col. John J Pershing threatened the mullahs with . . . "splattering of pigs-blood on your houses and families and any who attack us and are killed will be buried in pig-skins." Consequently the mullahs made Pershing an Honorary Chieftan with little if any more trouble in his area of command.

In the 1938 book, "Jungle Patrol", the author indicates, regarding the defeat of the insurrection by the Moros,

It was Colonel Alexander Rodgers of the 6th Cavalry who accomplished by taking advantage of religious prejudice what the bayonets and Krags had been unable to accomplish. Rodgers inaugurated a system of burying all dead juramentados in a common grave with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs. The Mohammedan religion forbids contact with pork; and this relatively simple device resulted in the withdrawal of juramentados to sections not containing a Rodgers. Other officers took up the principle, adding new refinements to make it additionally unattractive to the Moros. In some sections the Moro juramentado was beheaded after death and the head sewn inside the carcass of a pig. And so the rite of running juramentado, at least semi-religious in character, ceased to be in Sulu. The last cases of this religious mania occurred in the early decades of the century. The juramentados were replaced by the amucks. .. who were simply homicidal maniacs with no religious significance attaching to their acts.

Snopes indicates it could well have happened that Pershing actually did these things. The stories regarding it are persistant and there is a lot of ancedotal accounts and evidence that is happened. I believe it did.