MEXICAN WATER, Ariz. — For Navajo spiritual leader Steven Benally, saving a Native American religion from extinction means preserving those diminishing lands where hallucinogenic peyote grows wild.

Peyote is a small, button shaped cactus native to Mexico and southern parts of the United States. Potent compounds in peyote, such as mescaline, cause it to have a hallucinogenic effect in humans.

Andres Carillo, a Huichol Indian shaman, uses the peyote plant to create these artworks depicting the visions he has after consuming the cactus. The Huichol have asked the Mexican government to ...

Though peyote — a hallucinogenic cactus — has been used for hundreds of years by Mexican Indians, it only became popular outside of indigenous communities after Carlos Castaneda, then a student at the ...