This post is based on the highly amusing excerpt from Cullen (The American Dream, 111):
"In the beginning, there was a rough equality: an equality of death. Native or immigrant, male or female, rich or poor: the odds you would perish in early seventeenth-century North America were frighteningly high."
"In the beginning..." Those are the words of creation story. Fitting, perhaps. Cullen is talking about the creation of a white man's America--the place we live today. Specifically, he is talking about Puritan colonies in the Northeast.
Equality is important to modern Americans. The quote works because it suggests that maybe we aren't equal anymore. If we could just go back to the beginning, we would all be equal... but we'd all be dead...
North America wasn't empty. The quote doesn't work because creation stories start with an empty space.
Smallpox cares not for gender. The quote works because it's true.
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