cannon-balls passed through its walls and shattered the statuary in the surrounding grounds. At the opening of the battle, when the central American column, under Washington, descended the main street, they first overwhelmed a small British outpost under Col. Musgrave. Most of the British were scattered, but Musgrave, with a small party of infantry, took refuge in Chew's house, and set up a fire from the windows. The Americans opened an artillery-fire upon the house, but its stone walls were too solid to be beaten down by the three-pound and six-pound field-pieces of that day; and so Maxwell's brigade was left to besiege the house, while the main American column pressed on. The chief effect of this incident was to retard and weaken the American charge, and to give the British time to prepare for it.
CHI-AH-KIN, or AH-KIN-CHI (chee-ah-keen'),
Yucatec prince, d. about 1541. He was
general-in-chief of the army of Tutul Xin, king of
Mani, and won a good military reputation during
the war against the Spaniards, whom he defeated
in several battles. When Tutul Xin submitted to
the Spanish conquerors, he sent envoys to all the
caciques in Yucatan, to invite them to make peace
also; and for this purpose Chi-Ah-Kin and other
noblemen were directed to visit King Cocóm at
Zotuta, and this chief received them with apparent
regard, entertaining them with a splendid hunting-party
and banquet, at the end of which all the
envoys were beheaded by order and in presence of
Cocóm. Chi-Ah-Kin was the only one spared, in
order to make him suffer what they considered the
most ignominious punishment, that of cutting his
eyes out and scalping him. In this condition he
was taken to the Mani frontier and left there until
some Indians took him before his king. He died
a few months afterward. In 1599 the king of
Spain gave a pension of $200 to Gaspar Chin, son
of Chi-Ah-Kin and grandson of Tutul Xin.
CHIALIQUICHIAMA (chee-ah-lee-kee-chee-ah'-ma),
Incan soldier, of quitu ethnicity b. in the latter part of
the 15th century; d. at Cajamarca, Peru, in 1533.
He had won five battles against the Spaniards
before his king, Atahualpa, was defeated and made a
prisoner by Pizarro, and had great influence among
the other Indian warriors. Atahualpa, while in
prison at Cajamarca, summoned Chialiquichiama
to him, and the Spaniards made him a prisoner
also, fearing lest he might resume hostilities. After
the execution of Atahualpa, 29 Aug., 1533, Pizarro
advanced with his troops toward Cuzco; but the
natives attacked them several times with such
spirit and discipline that they suspected Chialiquichiama
was in secret communication with the
Indians and directing their operations. This suspicion
was enough to decide his fate, and Pizarro
sentenced him to be burned alive. He was offered
a less painful death if he would become a
Christian;
but he refused to be baptized, and died
according to the sentence, remonstrating to the last
moment against the injustice of his condemnation.
CHICKERING, Jesse, political economist, b.
in Dover, N. H., 31 Aug., 1797; d. in West
Roxbury, Mass., 29 May, 1855. He was graduated at
Harvard in 1818, studied theology, and became a
Unitarian minister. He afterward pursued a medical
course, receiving his diploma in 1833, and practised
medicine for about ten years in Boston and
West Roxbury. He was the author of a “Statistical
View of the Population of Massachusetts from
1765 to 1840” (Boston, 1846); “Emigration into
the United States” (1848); “Reports on the Census
of Boston” (1851); and a “Letter addressed to
the President of the United States on Slavery,
considered in Relation to the Principles of Constitutional
Government in Great Britain and in the
United States” (1855).
CHICKERING, Jonas, piano-manufacturer, b.
in New Ipswich, N. H., 5 April, 1797; d. in Boston,
Mass., 8 Dec., 1853. He was the son of a
blacksmith, and, after receiving a common-school
education, learned the trade of cabinet-making.
In 1818 he went to Boston, and a year afterward
became a workman in John Osborne's piano
manufactory. In 1823 he began business with a partner,
and subsequently carried it on alone. He associated
himself in 1830 with John Mackay, a retired
ship-master, and from that time imported, by the
cargo, the fine woods used in the construction of
piano-forte cases. In 1841 his partner was lost at
sea. He gradually extended his facilities until his
factory in Boston made 2,000 pianos a year. In 1852
the workshops were burned, and before the new
and more spacious building, erected around a
quadrangle on a lot five acres in extent, was completed,
he died. He had introduced various improvements
in the manufacture and construction of the piano-forte,
notably the circular scale. In 1825 Alpheus
Babcock, of Boston, patented a cast-iron frame for
a square piano. Mr. Chickering greatly improved
this frame, including in it the pin-bridge and
damper socket rail. This construction he patented
in 1840. At the London exhibition in 1851 he
exhibited a complete frame for grand pianos in one
casting. In 1853 he adopted the system of
overstringing, which he combined with a metal frame
of one casting, in a square piano, finished after his
death by his sons. The Chickering instrument has
a high reputation among musicians of all countries.
After the death of Jonas Chickering, who was
respected for his public spirit and benevolence not
less than for his progressive enterprise, the
business was continued by his three sons, who, after
receiving their education in the public schools, were
taken into the manufactory. — His son, Thomas
Edward, b. in Boston, 22 Oct., 1824; d. there, 14
Feb., 1871, succeeded his father as head of the firm,
of which he became a member when but twenty-one
years of age. For many years before the war
he was interested in the state militia, and in 1862
he left Boston in command of the 41st Massachusetts
volunteers. The regiment was sent to New
Orleans in December of that year, and performed
efficient service in the field. In April, 1863, Col.
Chickering was appointed military governor of
Opelousas. At the close of the war he was brevetted
brigadier-general.
CHIGNAVITCELUT, Oxiqnieb (chig-nah-beet-sa-loot'), king of Cumarcaah, Central America, flourished early in the 16th century. After the Quiché army, under their king, Tecúm-Umán, had been routed by the forces of Alvarado, who killed Tecúm-Umán himself in battle between Totonica-