Dr. William S. Kiser, professor of history and department chair at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, will present “The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.” The talk is part of the NMSU Library Archives and Special Collections department’s Borderland History Lectures.

In the mid-19th Century, the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora implemented bounty systems to monetize the killing and scalping of Apache people as a strategy for conquest. Civilians contracted with local governments to carry out a series of massacres that yielded windfall profits for the perpetrators. These events in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands reflected a broader 300-year trend across North America, wherein civilians were encouraged to kill Indigenous people through lucrative scalp bounties.

Kiser’s most recent book “The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare and the Violent Conquest of North America” was published in 2025 by Yale University Press.