SALVADOR LOPEZ (d. August, 1967, with some reports stating 1973) was a member and highly revered spiritual elder of the Cahuilla band of Indians of the Morongo Reservation, Banning, California. He was renowned as an expert on medicinal plants, a bird singer and doing feats with fire as well as being a Bear Shaman. Lopez is considered by some to be at least one of the sources of information Carlos Castaneda used regarding Sacred Datura and other hallucinogenics presented in his first two books.
True, the possibility does exists that Lopez could have contributed in some fashion as an informant of Castaneda's, but it is questionable. It becomes an even more remote possibility if Lopez is thrust into the role of the primary source of information, especially considering the fund of of knowledge Castaneda presented in his first two books. Lopez was known for being quite stoic and non-communicative even among his own band, so it would be highly unlikely that he would depart very much in the way ancient and guarded tribal secrets to a total stranger or outsider, most particularly so in the short space of time Castaneda had with him.
While it is possible Lopez may have had an influence on Castaneda, not to discount his abilities or knowledge in any way, a much more credible source would be the Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina, as cited by anthropologist Jay Courtney Fikes in his book Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties. The problem with Sabina is that she is not known to have ventured very far (physically) from her birthplace. Castaneda's wife Margaret Runyan confirms that her husband made frequent field trips to Mexico in the time he was supposedly apprenticed to the shaman sorcerer Don Juan Matus. Another person that sometimes shows up in the mix is the self and follower-claimed "Yaqui shaman" Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora who goes by the name Grandfather Cachora. Cachora has let it be known that he IS Don Juan Matus --- and the one who taught Castaneda. However, truth be said, a lot of Cachora's biographical background and some of his personal statements do not mesh that closely with how Castaneda has presented Don Juan in his series of books.
Even though it has been recorded that Castaneda met briefly with Dr. Timothy Leary at the Catalina Hotel in Zihuatanejo sometime during the summer of 1962 --- albeit somewhat unsuccessfuly --- NOTHING has surfaced that substantiates any sort of meeting between the curandera and Castaneda or that he ever made it all the way to HER remote village in the state of Oaxaca.
A much more credible source is the person designated only as the Informant that shows up in various writings including one of the last books in Castaneda's series of Don Juan books, The Active Side of Infinity. The so designated informant is well known to have have been friends with Sabina long before her rise to fame. In a quick note however, according to Richard de Mille in his book The Don Juan Papers (1980), in that Don Juan seemed to have the ability and knowledge to transmit the use of mushrooms similar to the curandera, it adds a certain amount of credibility to reports that Castaneda traveled with Don Juan to the mountains southwest and northwest of Valle Nacional in the State of Oaxaca to collect mushrooms --- but, in the mere process of same, does not necessarily validate any sort of a meeting between the two shamans and the curandera.
For more clarification as to the possibility of Don Juan being a composite of two or more shamans and who, if anybody those shamans might be, please see:
The Old Man In the Desert
"In describing his teacher, Don Juan used the word
Diablero. Later I learned diablero is a term used only by the Sonoran Indians. It refers to an evil person who practises black sorcery and is capable of transforming himself into an animal - a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature."CARLOS CASTANEDA: THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968)
Capable of transforming himself into an animal - a bird, a dog, a coyote, or any other creature! As stated prior in the main section above, Lopez was said to be a Bear Shaman. Bear Shamans are a special class of Shaman that have received their power from grizzly bears and that possess many of the qualities of the grizzly, especially their apparent invulnerability to fatal attack. Bear Shamans are said to have the ability to assume the form of bears (i.e., shapeshift) and that they can be killed an indefinite number of times when in this form and each time return to life. In some tribal beliefs the Bear Shaman was not thought to actually become a bear, instead being a man clothed in the skin of a bear, but capable through Shaman powers of inflicting greater injury than a true bear. To see a photo of a Native American Bear Shaman costume using the skin of a real bear, click HERE.
In a quick commment in a continuing theme as mentioned above regarding Carlos Castandea and if Don Juan Matus was a composite of one or more shamans or not. Don Juan is presented, understandably enough, throughout the series of books by Castaneda as if he was NOT. Castaneda states that Don Juan, at the age of twenty, had come in contact with a person Don Juan refered to as a master sorcerer by the name of Julian Osorio. Osorio inturn introduced Don Juan into a lineage of sorcerers that was purported to be twenty-five generations long. Don Juan told Castaneda that Osorio had been an actor and during one of his theatrical tours he had met another master shaman, Elias Ulloa, who transmitted to Osorio the knowledge of his lineage of sorcerers and thus inturn through Osorio to Don Juan, then down in lineage to Castaneda.
POWER OF THE SHAMAN
THE RELIGION OF THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA
By A. L. KROEBER.
University of California Publications
American Archaeology And Ethnology Vol. 4 No. 6
[1907]
THE GATE KEEPER'S
LIST OF SPIRITUAL TEACHERS
Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora, who, age wise, would be in his 90s now, is a Yaqui shaman known as Grandfather Cachora, that has indicated he IS the actual, real Don Juan Matus, the person who taught Carlos Castaneda. There are, however, rather stark differences between some of what he has said about himself and his background that do not necessarily line up with what Castaneda has written about Don Juan.
Corey Donovan, a former student of Carlos Castaneda and creator of the most excellent Castaneda internet site Sustained Action, attended a talk by Grandfather Cachora in September, 2000. At that talk Donovan asked when it was Castaneda studied with Cachora. Bernyce Barlow, author of Sacred Sites of the West and Sacred Sites and Shaman's Flights, a member of Cachora's immediate entourage and sitting at his feet during the talk, responded for him with, "In the early 70s." Donovan asked again, "Not in the 60s?" After looking at Cachora, Barlow responded with "Once maybe in '69."
Castaneda says he met Don Juan in the late summer of 1960 as stated in the now infamous Nogalas Bus Station Meeting. Eight years later, Castaneda's first book on Don Juan was published. If Cachora did not meet Castaneda until 1970 --- or possibly 1969 --- who was the person Castaneda met in 1960 that he claims to be Don Juan Matus?
Other discrepancies exist as well such as Cachora saying he was born in approximately 1912. Castaneda makes it quite clear in a number of places throughout his series of Don Juan books that Don Juan was born in 1891. In THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), Introduction, Castaneda writes, speaking of Don Juan:
The following is found in DON JUAN MATUS: Real or Imagined:
Cachora has indicated through discussion that his mother's parents were from Mongolia, and that his father, a Yaqui named Javali, was, like how Castaneda writes Don Juan Matus to be, "a man of knowledge." Cachora also states that his mother's parents passed their, apparently Mongolian, traditions to him.
Now, while in the overall scheme of things, to learn that a female offspring of Mongolian parents (i.e., Cachora's mother) would grow up to find herself in an actual physical situation that would allow her to be able to marry and/or procreate with a Yaqui Indian from Mexico (i.e., Cachora's father) seems questionable at best, I guess it would not be totally beyond comprehension either. However, as Castaneda writes, and I have presented above, Castaneda makes it quite clear that Don Juan's mother was of Yuma extraction. He also makes it quite clear in other places that Don Juan learned his man of knowledge craft from another man of knowledge, a man that was NOT of Indian, Yaqui, or Mongolian background. That man was Julian Osorio. Osorio, interestingly enough, as written by Castaneda, was NOT Nagual, Toltec, Aztec of any Indian extraction at all, BUT the son of European immigrants to Mexico. In turn Osorio had inherited everything from his teacher, Elias Ulloa. Elias had learned from Rosendo; he from Lujan; Lujan from Santisteban; and Santisteban from Sebastian. Before Sebastian there were eight others, but, according to Don Juan, they were quite different. They had a different attitude toward sorcery as well as a different concept of it, although they were still directly related to his line of sorcery. It wasn't until Sebastian's encounter and eventual alliance with the Death Defier that the lineage truly changed.
AND NOW THIS: I may come across seeming a tad bit facetious in my remarks about a potential hook-up between a full-bred Mongolian offspring and a Yaqui --- however, as odd and as remote a possibility as it may seem and I personally question the concept in it's overall viability, again, it is NOT fully or totally out of the question.
Some of you may recall that several days prior to unexpectantly running into Carlos Castaneda in the Nogales bus station on the same day Castaneda met Don Juan (linked above), that I was in Mexico in the town of Magdalena, somewhat south of Nogales. In Magdalena I met a man by the name of Maldonado and he inturn, in passing conversation told me, since I was from California at the time, that he had a relative, a brick maker, that lived in Pomona, California, a then small community east of Los Angeles. In that conversation, for no apparent reason except maybe to fluff up his own feathers, he said that his namesake relative, the brick maker, was a direct inline descendent of the great Yaqui warrior and general, Juan Maria Maldonado, known in Yaqui history as Tetabiate.
At the time, except as small talk, none of it meant anything to me one way or the other. Later on, as all of the Castaneda and Yaqui stuff came to the forefront I remembered the story about the brick maker being a Yaqui and living in Pomona, so one day, just for the heck of it, I sought him out.
Most of what he told me about Yaquis and General Maldonado did not seem to come first hand, but what he had formulated and learned over the years as he told the various stories over and over. However, he did tell me something I knew was from personal experience that made my jaw drop --- here, this basically uneducated, broken-english speaking, up from Sonora Yaqui had been to Siberia! Never in my life would I ever have thought of such a thing. What happened was, during the years 1918 to 1920 troops were sent into Siberia from the U.S. and a number of other places in what was called America's Undeclared War to guard segments of the railway between Vladivostok and Nikolsk-Ussuriski. In an almost amazing story, the brick maker got caught up in it and ended up in Siberia. Now, while it is true it was in the 1918-1920 period well AFTER the 1912 birth of Tezlcazi Guitimea Cachora and NOT Mongolia, it still remains at least one Yaqui got as far as Siberia in the early 1900s, which, albeit pushing it, opens the possibility --- at least for me and however remote --- possibly in either direction, of other potential defusional transgressions.
It should be noted that Ken Eagle Feather, who has stated in a series of books and interviews that he actually met and studied under Don Juan Matus, makes no reference in any of his works as to Matus being Cachora OR Lopez.
For more on Don Juan's father and if there was a Yuma Indian woman in the picture or not as the mother of Don Juan, please see Footnote [1] to Albert Franklin Banta.
TEZLCAZI GUITIMEA CACHORA: Yaqui Shaman
"All he said was that he had been born in the Southwest in 1891; that he had spent nearly all his life in Mexico; that in 1900 his family was exiled by the Mexican government to central Mexico along with thousands of other Sonoran Indians; and that he had lived in central and southern Mexico until 1940."
"(In) the tenth book into his series, titled Magical Passes (1998), Castaneda offers his strongest clarification of Don Juan's chronology, some of which of course, had been spattered here and there throughout each of his previous books over time as well. Don Juan is described as being born in Yuma, Arizona Territory, to a Yaqui Indian father from Sonora, Mexico and a Yuma Indian mother from the Territory of Arizona. The three of them lived together in Arizona Territory until Don Juan was ten years old, whereupon, for reasons not known or undisclosed by Castaneda, he was taken by his father to Sonora, Mexico. There they were unintentionaly caught up in the Mexican government war against the Yaquis. His father was killed, and Don Juan ended up in southern Mexico, where he grew up with Yaquis that had been uprooted previously by the Mexican government and sent to areas of Mexico well beyond the confines of Sonora --- places such as Oaxaca, Vera Cruz, and the Yucatan." (source)