A Nevada state panel has withdrawn an attempt to name a Lake Tahoe cove for the celebrated author Mark Twain, citing opposition from a tribe which claims he held racist views on Native Americans.

The news echoes a 2011 furore which blew up when a new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn removed more than 200 “hurtful epithets”. Then, only 13% of respondents to a Harris poll said they agreed with the decision to excise Twain's use of the word “nigger”.

Tribal representative Darrel Cruz said the writer of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was undeserving of the Lake Tahoe honour, because he made derogatory comments about the Washoe and other tribes in his literature.

The Nevada State Board on Geographic Names this week voted to indefinitely table the request after hearing opposition from the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, whose ancestral homeland includes Tahoe.



University of Nevada, Reno history professor emeritus James Hulse said it was irrelevant whether Twain did so because his writings were insulting to everyone, including governors and legislators.



Twain – whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens – assumed his pen name as a Nevada newspaper reporter in the 1860s, and wrote adoringly of Tahoe.