Hawaiian Game: GoBang

85. Ko-na-ne

Plate 11e

According to Brigham,1 a game "played on a flat surface of stone or wood, and somewhat resembling 'fox and geese' or Japanese 'GoBang' (go). Positions on the pa-pa-mu were marked by a slight depression on stone and often by the insertion of bone, usually chicken (sometimes human), in wood. There seems no definite number of places or arrangement. Beach-worn pebbles - coral for white, lava for black - completed the equipment." Two boards in the Bishop Museum (Plates XIe, and XIIi) are stated to have 180 and 83 places, respectively.

Plate 12iIn his journal of Cook's voyage to the Pacific ocean2 Captain King says : "They have a game very much like our draughts; but, if one may judge from the number of squares, it is much more intricate. The board is about two feet long and is divided into 238 squares, of which there are 14 in a row, and they make use of black and white pebbles, which they move from square to square."

Corney3 says: "Their national game is draughts, but instead of having twelve men each, they have about forty; the board is painted in squares, with black and white stones for men, and the game is decided by one party losing all his pieces."

Andrews defines ko-na-ne as a game like checkers, a species of pu-ni-pe-ke. The stones are placed on squares, black and white; then one removes one and the other jumps, as in checkers. He gives pa-pa-mu as the name of the board on which ko-na-ne is played, and i-li-i-li as pebbles, small stones, used in playing ko-na-ne. Also hi-u as the name of the counter, and also to move the hi-u in playing ko-na-ne. Hi-u-hi-u is "to practice sorcery" and also "to play ko-na-ne." Pa-hi-u-hi-u is the "name of a game like ko-na-ne," and "to move by jumping as one does in playing ko-na-ne." Lu-na is the chief piece in the game ko-na-ne.

1. Preliminary Catalogue, part II, p. 60.
2. VOL. III, p. 144.
3. Page 106.

Last update February 2, 2010