So there we were on the “Big Island”, Ernest Brown and I, exploring the “Place of Refuge” --an ancient, sacred Polynesian site for conscientious objectors, when came upon a rough-hewn stone game board filled with black and white stones. If you saw the photo on the AGA’s web site last week, you may think we’re playing go, but it’s actually konane, a unique Hawaiian game that was already an old tradition when James Cook discovered the “Sandwich Islands” and wrote about it. The board (…) is more than 1000 years old. Konane is sometimes called “Hawaiian checkers”, but it also has something in common with Chinese checkers and peg jumping games.
– Roy Laird, writing in the AGA E-Journal 7 March 2005
The Wikipedia page elaborates that “before contact with Europeans, the game was played using small pieces of white coral and black lava”.