When I made my first post comparing Last of the Mohicans to a Shakespearean Comedy, I was wary of using the label until I read the ending. I can now confidently say that it is not a Shakespearean Comedy, because it lacks a definitive characteristic of such a work: a happy ending. As a reader, I was rooting for Uncas and Cora to end up together (and not in the dead sense). They’re my two favorite characters due to their skill, intellect, and courage, and they seemed an even and great match. Recoiling from their violent deaths, I tried to parse out what Cooper was trying to accomplish in killing off two characters who are so likable, and doing so in such a violent manner.
The manner of Uncas and Cora’s death is easy to understand because they both died in a noble, brave, and resistive way, becoming of characters in a frontier adventure novel. However, I think beyond their deaths for the sake of plot, Cooper is continuing his racist commentary. In Cooper’s world, Uncas and Cora cannot end up together alive and he is perhaps using their deaths as a cautionary tale against interracial romances. While Hawkeye understands when the Delawares are discussing the romance of Cora and Uncas during the funeral, the narrator points out that it is best that Munro, Heyward, and Alice don’t understand. Additionally, it is of note that Alice, whose blood “bears no cross,” will live and presumably have children, unlike Cora whose bloodline will end with her. This fits into the narrative that Cooper paints of the inevitable death of the indigenous people in a way that is in no way caused by white settlers; afterall, Uncas and Cora both die at the hands of Hurons, despite the attempt of Gamut (representative of Christianity) to save them.
Your commentary on Cooper’s beliefs and intentions as revealed by the story is spot on. In addition to that, I think he goes out of his way to disguise these personal biases through the personalities he gives to the characters. Uncas and Cora are given the most honorable and likeable character traits just to distract us from Cooper’s views of Native Americans as a race and his racial biases.
One could see how Hawkeye’s racist beliefs and extensive knowledge of the landscape align with that of Cooper’s, but a characteristic he adds to perhaps throw the reader off is that Hawkeye’s lack of respect for knowledge that which is gained from books, and only cares about years and experience. That is quite opposite to Cooper himself as a writer and someone who learned things not only through observing the landscape but also through educational texts. Cooper puts a lot of himself into Hawkeye, and puts in an equally great amount of effort to make it a little more subtle, thus resulting in the contradictory nature that is mentioned so frequently.