# General Pershing and the Phillipino Muslims **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 15, 2001, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-pershing-and-the-phillipino-muslims/87559 "2001-10-15T20:35:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Shadowfyre](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shadowfyre/32/9972_2.png) [@Shadowfyre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shadowfyre)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2001, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-pershing-and-the-phillipino-muslims/87559/1 "2001-10-15T20:35:33Z")
Kinda sounds like a band, huh? Anyway, I read an article on Yahoo news that said before WWI, General Pershing’s troops in the Phillipines were under attack by Muslims based in the southern part of the country. It was the typical jihad explanation and a lot of his men were dying. So Pershing rounded up a bunch of the ringleaders (how? I don’t know) and executed all but three, one at a time in front of the rest of the group. They let the last three go to report the news. The twist is that the firing squad rolled each bullet in pig fat. Then they swabbed the barrels of their guns with pig fat as well. After each person was shot, they were wrapped in pig skins and laid in a grave. Before the graves were closed, the remains of the pigs were poured in. The kicker here, of course, is that if a Muslim dies with any bit of swine in his body, he cannot enter paradise. Once the news got back, there was no more jihad. The question is, is this true? I started telling this story and now I have some misgivings. I wanted to verify the story before I spread anymore wrong information. ---
**Author:** ![Vinnie\_Virginslayer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/53a042/32.png) [@Vinnie\_Virginslayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vinnie_Virginslayer)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2001, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-pershing-and-the-phillipino-muslims/87559/2 "2001-10-15T20:46:32Z")
Don’t know about that story, sounds eerily like an urban legend. Persching however did receive criticism for his rather harsh though apparently effective reaction to the Moro insurrections. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2001, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-pershing-and-the-phillipino-muslims/87559/3 "2001-10-15T20:53:06Z")
[This site](http://www.bakbakan.com/junglep/jp-17.html), quoting from _Jungle Patrol: A Story of the Philippine Constabulary_, by Vic Hurley (1938), suggests that the tale may have a basis in fact. However, Hurley says the practice originated with a Col. Rogers, not Pershing himself: > [@](#): > > **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 [sworn ones] 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.** ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2001, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-pershing-and-the-phillipino-muslims/87559/4 "2001-10-15T21:10:57Z")
I tried to look into this in response to a Great Debate spawned by [**Wildest Bill**](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=89933&pagenumber=2). As I noted in that thread, Pershing may have overseen the virtual execution of as many as 2000 Moro warriors and noncombatants. (Some sources I’ve seen claim that the women and children were armed, too–a common excuse for massacres of American Indian noncombatants in the 1800s.) “Battle of Bud Bagsak… From January-June, the whole ward of Lati with a population of between 6,000 to 10,000, fortified themselves in a cotta in Mt. Bagsak. On June 11, Gen. John Pershing ordered the attack… Though official estimates accounted for only 300 Moro casualties (Orosa, p.27), John McLeod, who was in Manila at the time of the massacre, reported that 2,000 were killed including 196 women and 340 children. Pershing was later criticized for his actions but a Congressional investigation into the massacre never materialized. (Gowing, pp. 240-241).” –[cite](http://www.phil-am-war.org/moro_chrono.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2001, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/general-pershing-and-the-phillipino-muslims/87559/5 "2001-10-15T21:28:17Z")
You know, I was just thinking… “Those weren’t babirusas that Rodgers was using to defile the Sulu Islanders, were they?” I thought that the babirusa might be “legal” in the eyes of Islam because they have split hooves, horns, and multi-chambered stomachs, but [this site](http://www.zootorah.com/Identification.htm) claims that babirusas aren’t kosher. And, I don’t know that babirusas live in the Sulus. Plus, I’m not certain that “kosher” equates to whatever it is that Islam doesn’t like about swine. So I guess I’m just confusing the issue. Sorry.