The first type of settlements were pueblos, towns. In what is now the southwestern United States, many Indian villages became the sites of Spanish towns. A pueblo usually had a center plaza surrounded by homes, a church, and perhaps some businesses. Farms lay outside the town. Pueblos served as trading posts and sometimes centers of local Indians.
Missions were settlements established by priests to convert local Indians to Catholicism. Priests and Indians would build a mission compound around a central church, with farmlands and homes typically lying on the outskirt. …
