Tools are a gift from The Creator to assist people in their work, to be used and shared, not to be hoarded by one. It was not sensible to dig the muskrats by hand when perfectly good tools for the job were readily available. The settler was not using the tools at the time, therefore, he had no current need of them. Why shouldn't they use the tools and why should they apologize for being smart. It's an age old problem that continues today.
People are afraid of things that are different or foreign to their way of thinking.
Instead of trying to understand why something is different, we try to justify our fear by turning the object of that fear into something evil. Personally, I feel that a piece of this story is missing. The Indians probably left the settler a gift. If you want to understand history, please, learn about the writer, learn about the environment that the writer lived in, read original source materials whenever possible, read between the lines, and form your own opinions. This applies to any type of research you are doing.