United States | News & Politics

Outside a botanical garden gift shop on the northern shore of the most remote place on earth, rests a reproduction of an ancient board game, chiseled into a block of black stone, its 88 rocks and coral bits resting in 88 divots as if waiting for you to play. A plaque with a cursory description of the game offers a declaration that is equal parts humblebrag and dungeon-master riddle:

“It was said that King Kamehameha the Great was an excellent player who was able to beat his opponent in one move.”

This lore drop about the legendary warrior-chief is a withering tease for Kōnane, a once-ubiquitous pastime that was carved into stone slabs across the islands, some of which still protrude from the ground. You can see them if you look closely among the rocks, the shallow fingerprint-sized holes that make up the game board catching the evanescent breeze along the shore.

This is no easy monument. The American conquerors of Hawaii wanted this game banned.

The disappearance of Kōnane was the penalty for the 1893 U.S. government-backed coup to topple Hawaii’s monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani. The islands’ new self-proclaimed landlords didn’t just seize land and crops, but further sentenced defining Hawaiian customs to purgatory: dance, music, language. In the crusade to strip the islands to the bones of their humanity, the cultural blacklist included Kōnane.