Will Welton

White Bear Clan Will Welton

Tanner Oaks (Ta Noaks) was a full blood Comanche Indian. His band of Comanche tribes men were the first on the Fort Sill reservation. Tanner Oaks received a white mans education at Fort Sill and was sent to a college in Tennessee for his education of higher learning. When he returned to the reservation, finding his people starving to death from bad food or no food furnished by the agency, he took his immediate family that was still alive and headed west. He was fortunate to come up on Harmon Bell and his friends heading west. It happen that an old Indian man traveling with Ta Nooks and a ragtag band of Indians with children, happen to know three of the old Ex Rangers traveling west with Harmon Bell and his friends. He was instrumental in being pardners with Bell in building up the Bell Ranch.