[2] His parents were Sally Terrapin (or Ayasta), a medicine woman and John Long, a Baptist preacher.

[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.

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.

[10] Many of Long's original writings are in the Frank Speck Cherokee Collection at the American Philosophical Society.