From his wiki page, so make of it what you will:
Atrocities and tragedies of colonization More recent views of Columbus, particularly those of Native Americans, have tended to be much more critical.[101][102][103] This is because the native Taino of Hispaniola, where Columbus began a rudimentary tribute system for gold and cotton, disappeared so rapidly after contact with the Spanish, because of overwork and especially, after 1519, when the first pandemic struck Hispaniola,[104] because of European diseases.[105] Some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80–90 percent in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics.[106] The native Taino people of the island were systematically enslaved via the encomienda system,[107] which resembled a feudal system in Medieval Europe.[108] The pre-Columbian population is estimated to have been perhaps 250,000–300,000. According to the historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes by 1548, 56 years after Columbus landed, fewer than five hundred Taino were left on the island.[109]
Columbus' coat of arms, as depicted in his Book of Privileges (1502) Columbus' treatment of the Hispaniola natives was even worse; his soldiers raped, killed, and enslaved with impunity at every landing. When Columbus fell ill in 1495, soldiers were reported to have gone on a rampage, slaughtering 50,000 natives. Upon his recovery, Columbus organized his troops' efforts, forming a squadron of several hundred heavily armed men and more than twenty attack dogs. The men tore across the land, killing thousands of sick and unarmed natives. Soldiers would use their captives for sword practice, attempting to decapitate them or cut them in half with a single blow.[110]
The historian Howard Zinn writes that Columbus spearheaded a massive slave trade; in 1495 his men captured in a single raid 1500 Arawak men, women, and children. When he shipped five hundred of the slaves to Spain, 40% died en route.[46] Historian James W. Loewen asserts that "Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves – about five thousand – than any other individual... other nations rushed to emulate Columbus."[111]
When slaves held in captivity began to die at high rates, Columbus switched to a different system of forced labor: he ordered all natives over the age of thirteen to collect a specified amount (one hawk's bell full) of gold powder every three months. Natives who brought the amount were given a copper token to hang around their necks, and those found without tokens had their hands amputated and were left to bleed to death.[46][112]
The Arawaks attempted to fight back against Columbus's men but lacked their armor, guns, swords, and horses. When taken prisoner, they were hanged or burned to death. Desperation led to mass suicides and infanticide among the natives. In just two years under Columbus' governorship more than half of the 250,000 Arawaks in Haiti were dead.[46]
De las Casas records that when he first came to Hispaniola in 1508, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...."[113]
Samuel Eliot Morison, a Harvard historian and author of a multivolume biography on Columbus writes, "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide."[114] Loewen laments that while "Haiti under the Spanish is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history", only one major history text he reviewed mentions Columbus' role in it.[111]
There is evidence that the men of the first voyage also brought syphilis from the New World to Europe.[115] Many of the crew members who served on this voyage later joined the army of King Charles VIII in his invasion of Italy in 1495. After the victory, Charles' largely mercenary army returned to their respective homes, thereby spreading "the Great Pox" across Europe and triggering the deaths of more than five million people.[116]