saunt's first monograph, "a new order of things: property, power, and the transformation of the creek indians, 1733-1816", (1999) documents the eighteenth-century transformation of the deep south sparked by the creek indians' accumulation of cattle and slaves. "a new order of things" was the 2000 winner of the southern historical association's charles s. snydor award for best book on southern history and of the american society for ethnohistory's wheeler-voegelin award for best book in ethnohistory.