Apparently Carlos Castaneda's series of novels about a Yaqui Shaman named Don Juan who ritually altered his consciousness with peyote, was not based on a real person. Yaqui culture does not use peyote. Castaneda's novels were so popular, that many readers took them as new age gospels, and deified Don Juan as the quintessential shaman. Unfortunately, the myth of Don Juan was simply not true. (See Shaman or Charlatan?)

However, some Native American tribes do use peyote sacramentally. The Huichol Indians of northwestern Mexico were the first tribe to do so. After them, the Apache and Tonkawas were two of the first tribes to embrace peyote in the U.S. Southwest. The Comanche and Kiowa adopted the use of peyote at the turn of the 20th Century.