These images are all of what is today San Marino, California at Euston Street and Patton Way. But look at the adobe / masonry part of the building.
The San Gabriel Mission opened up on Tongva land and sometime later or before this land likely had worker housing and agricultural service buildings for the mission near its water-powered grist mill known as El Molino Viejo or “the Old Mill”, which is today part of the Huntington Museum. Nearby canyons supplied the area with water which powered this mill, but also fed a shallow lake that is today Lacy Park.
When the Mexican Government formed and secularized the mission, they gave it the name “Rancho Huerta de Cuati” or “Ranch of the Cuati Garden”. Nothing is written about how the word “cuati” ends up in this garden’s name, or what it meant. It’s possible Franciscans or Tongva were identifying either raccoons or ringtails as coati, which would have been illustrated in spanish codexes written in earlier missions further south where coati are endemic. To this day raccoons are a major problem for ripening grapes in vineyards, and they are in the Procynidae family along with coati.
There is still a 250-year old grape vine in the San Gabriel Mission Courtyard to this day. It’s possible these California “Cuati” still haunt it when ripening time comes.
