Re: Shavano ?? or Shawano ??

D&RGW 223 Wrote:
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>
> Also, it is important to remember that when
> translating native american names, the writer
> often wrote the words phonetically as best as he
> or she could understand it. Thus, one translator
> may have spelled it Shawano, and another Shavano,
> but both intended to write the same word from the
> same language. I imagine this is the source of the
> difference in your case.

In western Nevada (Carson & Colorado RR country) there was a woman copper prospector with a Nicaraguan heritage. Ferminia Sarras was sometimes called the "Copper Queen" and both her family and the contemporary Hawthorne, Nevada, newspaper said she was the source of the name of the Mina, Nevada. But, just about every time the Reno newspaper carried a write-up about her success with locating and selling the mining claims, there was a different spelling of her name.

Her story is one of several told in the book A Mine of Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950 by Sally Zanjani and published by University of Nebraska Press.

Brian Norden