The conclusion of the tragic story is befittingly somber and ritualistic, somehow bringing things together. For instance, Gamut, who has survived his initiation into the frontier, comes so under the spell of the ritual Indian singing that he submits to it and later adds his voice to the ceremony. The man who started out as the traditional, stock comic Yankee character has become in many ways the most thoroughly developing character in the book. He has experienced, learned, and gone into action both beyond himself and in spite of himself.
The motif of disguise (part of the bigger motif of unreality) has been dropped once the pursuit reaches the point of direct confrontation and action. Through death and its aftermath, everything now stands out in naked reality. Chingachgook, for example, has discarded not only his beaver head but also all other decorations on his body except the one tattooed emblem as he faces his dead son. He and Hawkeye quite unashamedly shed tears over the grave of the youth.
The theme of miscegenation is also rounded out. What was for Cooper apparently a taint of mixed blood for Cora is ended with her death, and through his grief Munro pays for his rationalized deviation. The further deaths of Magua and Uncas end the possibility of intermarriage between the novel's racial groups. If the reader assumes that Hawkeye is Cooper's spokesman, then the novel becomes in part a vehicle against miscegenation even after death. The scout's reaction is of course really an extension of his love for individualism and his critical relativity. He believes in a people's "gifts" and in keeping them pure. He respects the differences that confront each other on the frontier, and his view has become in fact a principle of differentness.
Cooper's big theme of the frontier has other aspects, of course, and again here at the conclusion of the story Hawkeye stands right at the center. In spite of (perhaps because of) his ideas about "gifts" and miscegenation, he reverences the concept of brotherhood. This is seen in his willingness to help any worthy person, in his relationship to Uncas and Chingachgook throughout the book, in his final words on Uncas, and especially in his symbolic grasping of hands with Chingachgook at the end. He is Cooper's ideal, stalwart man, in whom the two convictions—differentness and brotherhood—can survive side by side.
It is this quality in Hawkeye that gilds the edge of the cloudy tragedy. As the final words of Tamenund remind the reader, there comes an end for individuals, families, tribes, and even races. But in this novel, Hawkeye embodies that which abides and, through abiding, overcomes. It involves what is ideal and basic to existence and, as here, it can reach the plane of symbolism and ritual.
