Remembering Magnificent, Magnetic Magnolia Ellis
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
by Olivia Pepper
This place has always attracted healers and those in need of healing.
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico: once known as Hot Springs and before that called “hot springs” in colonial Spanish and before that called “hot springs” in a variety of Indigenous languages, known and shared by many regional tribes, is home to legendary hot springs whose waters are rich in all manner of trace minerals. Locals and visitors alike swear by the softening, unwinding, gentling waters that miraculously burble up from the ancient singing earth.
The town itself is alleged to be cursed because of white settlers drawing blood here; my Indigenous neighbors tell me that for thousands of years all of the tribes agreed to leave weapons outside of the valley so that all could benefit from the healing waters. But early in the Apache Wars, the white men massacred a group of Chihene people who had fled to the springs seeking refuge. After that they took possession of the land and the waters.
My neighbor Bobby whose family has been here for thousands of years tells me that afterwards the land was cursed so that the white men could never profit from it.
One can feel something uneasy here, certainly, some strange shimmer of electric sorrow but also the stubborn blooming promise of healing, of transformation. The waters want to love you. The air wants to bless you. This place wants to be remembered as sacred by all who walk here.
To whom it may concern,
This is to state that I will be 78 years old the ninth day of August, 1957 and I wish to tell whoever may be interested of the help that I received from Magnolia Ellis. I first heard her through a friend of mine who, so far as I know, was the first man from Dallam County, Texas, to ever take treatment from her. At the time I made light of this “lady doctor” and he told me that if more people went to Magnolia there would be less graves in our cemeteries today. Now, after eight years I know he was right. At that time I had back trouble, and every doctor I had consulted told me that surgery was my only solution. I’ve not been able to lie on my back for over 18 years. I went to Magnolia and took 21 treatments and have slept on my back if I wish ever sense. One month later I was in a car accident and my neck broken. I was informed by some of the best doctors in their field that I would have to wear a brace for at least two years and possibly the rest of my life. They also told me that I would never regain the use of arms which seemed to be paralyzed. Again I went to Magnolia and took treatments. I took the brace off when I arrived home have never worn it since; also I was able to feed myself, a thing my wife had done for me for 73 days.
C.H. Farmer
Dalhart, Texas
October 9, 1956
Should you find yourself in Truth or Consequences, it is likely you’ll take a slow drive or an ambling walk down the sleepy little town’s ever-changing main drag. Maybe you’ll be dazed and pleasantly relaxed by all the lithium, magnesium, gold seeping through your skin into your bones.
Toward where Broadway curves and begins to run north toward Elephant Butte, at 310 N Broadway St, you’ll find the Magnolia Ellis Building, which is currently unoccupied but recently repainted. Sometimes wildflowers bloom in the margins. Sometimes birds flit across the balcony. If you pause, maybe you’ll feel something: a buzz, a curiosity.
The building was constructed in the early 1940s, specifically to accommodate the rapidly-expanding practice of the world-renowned healer Magnolia Ellis, who had relocated to Hot Springs in 1937 because her prayers told her to – but who stubbornly insisted that she was not a faith healer, and was, rather than directly consulting God or the spirits, moving “natural earth magnetism” through her body intuitively to heal rheumatic complaints.
From an architectural guide to historic buildings in Sierra County:
“The Magnolia Ellis Building is a two-story structure with a concrete foundation. The building’s various design elements suggest a two-part commercial building. Three discrete commercial storefronts line the ground floor, each with large windows…A slight shed overhang lining the façade is topped with a heavy brick balustrade lining a second-story balcony. The second story, now functioning as apartments, has a flat roof with an ornate brick coping lining the parapet, suggestive of the Territorial Revival style. A roof-mounted neon sign extends across the central part of the roof. Walls consist of concrete block faced with brick on the first story and cement stucco on the second story. A wood door at the west end of the building offers access to the apartments.”
In the gravel parking lot you can find a sun-faded informational placard. An image of Magnolia herself, tiaraed and smiling, faint and disappearing. There is tantalizingly little information about her on this waymarker, most notably that she was firm that she did not possess any supernatural powers. When I passed by once with a friend who is a Chinese medicine practitioner, we spoke about the possibility of Magnolia intuiting meridians.
In many of the traditions I have been brought into, particularly in my own Indigenous lineages, a difficult birth or childhood illness or infirmity can wake one up to the medicine ways.
According to a small brochure entitled THE MAGNIFICENT MAGNOLIA, published in early 1957 by Mavis Martin (Magnolia’s daughter), Magnolia Ellen Yoakum was born in a small village in Hill County, Texas to a white mother and a Cherokee father. Magnolia’s mother was 54 years of age at the time of her birth; she was the youngest of eight and was an unexpected child. She was born at only seven months gestation, in 1893, and weighed 1 1/4 pounds. Initially, Magnolia was recorded as stillborn because it was considered unlikely that she would survive more than a few days. But the midwife, a Black woman by the name of Ellen Pickett, allegedly swaddled the tiny baby, put her into a shoebox, and placed her in the warming compartment of the family’s cookstove. The midwife then fed her with an eyedropper and rubbed her back and chest vigorously for the first week of her life, and, surprising everyone, Magnolia prevailed. Thus she was given the name Magnolia for the tree that was budding at the time of her birth, and given the middle name Ellen after the midwife who had not given her up for dead.
“Magnolia’s survival then was just as amazing as her endurance and competence are today. She was very small for her age until she reached her teens, at the age of eight years she only weighed 48 pounds although she was quite healthy. All the family and friends of the family noticed what an unusual child Magnolia was even when she was very young. She had an almost uncanny ability to foresee what would happen in the future. Things would happen exactly as she would say they would. It was a general belief that the child was too intelligent and that she would not live to reach maturity.”
Magnolia’s family was already poor even before the Depression and the Dust Bowl, but their way of life was absolutely decimated by hardship and circumstance. When Magnolia was 16, the Yoakum family moved westward to Kent County, Texas. Magnolia felt it her duty to contribute help to her family, so she took the state teachers examination in order to start teaching school. In Estacado, she met and married a much older man, but their marriage was a disaster.
“During the second year of this marriage I was born. When I was just a baby I had double pneumonia and also a very weak heart. My mother took me to every doctor she even thought could help me; however, nothing gave me the relief she did when she placed her hands on my back and chest. Now I wish to say that I do not try to create the impression that Magnolia is a person of the supernatural, but I do truthfully believe that she is gifted with a magnetic power that only God could give her. At the same time I think that even with this gift it would be impossible for her to do the things she does for humanity without other things, such as education, the study of human nature, an intense desire to help people, and a very strong willpower.”
In her early 20s, Magnolia left her marriage with her infant daughter Mavis and moved away to Lubbock, where she enrolled in college. She was among the first women to study medicine and psychology in that institution—in particular she was enchanted by studying the nervous system.
She carried Mavis to classes with her, strapped on her back in the style of her aunties. At night she worked in a boarding house and on the weekends in a department store. At some point during this time, Magnolia began to receive private intuitions and guidances. She made extensive notes in journals and experimented with soothing joint and nerve pain for her colleagues and fellow students, by a laying-on-of-hands. Mavis’ health stabilized and she often would bring her friends to Magnolia for healing. In 1937, when Magnolia was in her 40s and her daughter had already married, Magnolia answered a “call from Spirit” and relocated to Hot Springs, New Mexico and began offering treatments to the public.
“There are hot mineral springs in this town which are used to take hot bath by those who desire them. This town is located 150 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The climate is very mild as a rule during the cold months of the year, this is conducive to pleasant living for people who are not well. The population is around 6000. Stores, bath houses, apartments and hotels are conveniently located for those who are without transportation. The building which belongs to Magnolia is at a central location here. She has her living quarters in one wing of the building and uses the other wing for her office and waiting room. There is a large parking lot in front of her building that accommodates a large number of cars. The waiting room will seat about 75 people and there’s always a full house. At times there is not even standing room inside, and some wait in their cars and sit on benches which are out in front of her office. There are no appointments made, as she has several hundred people visit her each day. People draw numbers as they come in which number 1-100. Magnolia sees each one when his number is called. People who are on crutches, in wheel chairs, or those who are in great deal of pain are taken in at once and are not asked to draw a number. There are six booths with tables and them. When one’s number is called he is shown to a booth and lies down on a table. Magnolia moves quietly from one booth to the next and passes her hands over the person’s body. The treatment she gives is very short, she uses no mechanical devices of any kind, only her hands. She is quite honest in her opinion and while she is in the booth, is she feels she can be of no help to them, she says so immediately. If she believe a person requires medical attention or surgery she refers them to a medical doctor at once…Her work has not always been easy for her. There are always those kind of people who are jealous and prejudiced against a person in her position. She has been accused, by insidious persons, of practicing everything from hypnotism to witchcraft, and just for money alone. All of this sort of thing she ignores and continues to do what she thinks is best for everyone. A great number of those who visit her are charity cases and many bring her handiwork and things of this sort if they did not have the money. This is a help to lots of people and also agreeable with Magnolia. She has had visitors from every state in the United States come to her for help and several from abroad.”
When she was in her mid-70s, Magnolia responded to a radio interviewer who asked if she ever tired in her work or expected to retire. She said:
“I’ll never get too old or too tired to work as long as I feel that I am able to help humanity.”
Magnolia Ellis
According to her family and friends, she would joke that when she got too old to work, she would “turn into an old gray mule and keep on.”
Magnolia died in 1974, at the age of 80 or 81 years old. She is buried at Sunset Cemetery in Willcox, Arizona. It seems for the last couple of years of her life she was in care of some tribal relations and performed quiet labors until her death.
Come back to Broadway. Wriggle your toes, stretch your neck. Breathe deep.
Remember as you stand here looking at the place Magnolia designed for herself, that thousands upon thousands of people have passed through this unassuming little brick building where the songbirds congregate in search of healing.
And many of them found it.
Olivia Pepper is a writer, star poet and question-asker who has a large collection of rocks and has never eaten a hamburger. Olivia lives in rural New Mexico.
