The Fry-Bread Seller, Acoma "Sky City," NM

I was blessed to spend great swathes of time in the American Southwest, including in the pueblos of New Mexico.

This beauty was selling fry-bread (which is exactly what it sounds like) at Acoma"Sky City." I was there with a group of students on a trip I organized. Needless to say, fry-bread was consumed in mass quantities.

Sky City dates back to the twelfth century (but I don't think this gal has been there quite that long). It sits atop a high mesa (flat-topped hill, mountain, or--in this case--rock) over 350 feet (100+ meters) high. It's considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in what is now the United States.

The people speak Keresan, a language they have in common with people in a handful of other pueblos, including Laguna, Cochiti, and Zia. The 1990 census showed only around 8,000 people speaking various dialects of the language. It's a linguistic isolate, meaning its descent from a root language is unclear. Perhaps it came with their ancestors when the emerged from the earth, as their origin myth states.