In the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century, one room schools were commonplace throughout rural Kansas. In most rural schools, all of the students met in a single room. One room meant one teacher who taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic to both boys and girls of all grades. When one-on-one instruction was necessary, the teacher would call a student forward to the recitation desk. Supplies might be limited. There was a blackboard, desks or planks for children, a teacher's desk, maps, sometimes a globe and, if the teacher was musical, a piano. In the earliest days, students would often provide their own books, usually from the selection of McGuffey Readers. Within the school, there was always a water pail and dipper to keep one's cool during the hot summer months. Outside, not far from the front door, was the water pump. And, at a safe and hygienic distance from the school house itself, an outhouse. In central Kansas, it was common to find a storm shelter where children could go in the event of a tornado. One-room schools are no longer used in Kansas, falling victim to the declining number of farms and students, the increasing use of automobiles, and school unification. History Early Kansas The area which now includes Kansas was home to many Indian tribes for thousands of years. Non-natives visited the area of Kansas as early as Francisco Vásquez de Coronado 1540 - 1542. He encountered Indians he called the Quiverans, probably ancestors of the Pawnee people. Between 1802 and 1804 Merriweather Lewis and William Clark crossed the northeastern portion of Kansas territory on their way to the Pacific meeting the Kansa Indians from whom the state takes its name. Adventurers and hunters later visited the area known as the Great American Desert, an area, at first, considered unfit for human settlement. In 1846 Francis Parkman toured western Kansas, hunting the American bison, otherwise known as buffalo. His two-month adventure in Kansas and other western states to be would become the subject of the best selling The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life. James R. Mead, one of the founders of Wichita, explored Kansas between 1859 and 1863, and later settled in Wichita. He knew such colorful characters as Kit Carson, Jesse Chisholm, Buffalo Bill, and Chief Santana. His recollections became a book, Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains,