Will West Long

Wili Westi was born in c. 1869 in Big Cove, North Carolina.[2] His parents were Sally Terrapin (or Ayasta), a medicine woman and John Long, a Baptist preacher.[2] He was raised with traditional Cherokee spiritual values despite his father being a Baptist.[3]

Long was sent to Trinity College (now Duke University) when he was age 16.[2][3] After several months he ran away from the college and walked home; he remained home for a short time before going back to the college for a year.[3] He never learned how to read or write in the Cherokee language as a child, only speak.[3] An older college classmate from Tennessee taught him Cherokee literacy.[3]

When he returned home from college he initially settled into farming.[3] In 1887, ethnographer James Mooney hired Long to be his scribe and interpreter.[3] Mooney encouraged Long to go back to school, as a result he attended Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) from 1895 to 1904.[3][6]

For 10 years he lived and worked in New England, including in the towns and cities of Conway, Amherst, North Amherst, and Boston.[3][6]

His health started to decline and his mother was getting older, around 1904 he returned to live on the Qualla.[3] Upon his return he started a project making a systematic study of Cherokee tradition, which included the study of medicine, ritual, and "supernatural lore".[3] Long started to work closely with Mooney again, as both men shared the goal of wanting to preserve Cherokee history.[3] Other ethnologists and anthropologists came to work with Long including Mark R. Harrington, Frank G. Speck, William Henry Gilbert, Paul Kirchhoff, Arthur Randolph Kelly, Frans M. Olbrechts, and Leonard Broom.[3]  

He created traditional Cherokee masks for cultural use, a craft he learned from a cousin, Charley Lossiah.[6]

As he got older, Long witnessed the Cherokee peoples dependence on the outside world and their economy.[3] He started to share with the Cherokee the idea of the world ending (but it was outside of the Christian-meaning of Armageddon).[3] James Mooney and Frans M. Olbrechts' "Swimmer Manuscript" was a published false statement that was damaging to Long's reputation because Olbrecht could not understand the difficulties Long faced in the acculturation process.[3]

His son, Allen Long (1917–1983) was also a noted Cherokee mask maker.[7] His nephew, Walker Calhoun (1918–2012) was a Cherokee medicine man, musician, dancer, and teacher.

At the time of his death, Long was translating and interpreting a series of books with anthropologist Frank G. Speck, and writing a Cherokee dictionary with George Myers Stephens.[3] Long died of a heart attack on March 14, 1947, at the Qualla.[3]

Long's masks can be found in museum collections include at the National Museum of the American Indian,[8] and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.[9] The Will West Long manuscript papers are kept at the Gilcrease Museum.[10] Many of Long's original writings are in the Frank Speck Cherokee Collection at the American Philosophical Society.[5]

In 2020, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina held a group exhibition of Cherokee masks called "Many Faces", which included Booger masks by Long.[11]

• Speck, Frank G.; Broom, Leonard (1993). Cherokee Dance and Drama. The Civilization of the American Indian Series. Vol. 163. Will West Long (contributions). University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-2580-0.

• Cherokee Preservation Foundation
• Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

• Mooney, James (1932). Olbrechts, Frans M. (ed.). The Swimmer Manuscript: Cherokee Sacred Formulas and Medicinal Prescriptions. Bulletin, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology. Vol. 99. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology. U.S. Government Printing Office. ISSN 0082-8882.

• Audio clip: Cherokee Indian dance tunes, performed by Long in 1946, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress