Devil's advocate here. Columbus may have been brutal but his voyage joined the eastern and western hemispheres in a way that they had not been in the past. The whole development of the modern world owes something to Columbus.
This. Everyone was a brutal butcher back then (and still are now, judging by the threats of certain men). Do you think if the Incas had discovered Spain they would have been gentle? What's memorialized isn't the morality of the man but the significance of the voyage.
Actually no, Columbus was awful even by the standards of his time. I mean FFS the Spanish monarchs who were carrying out the Spanish Inquisition removed him from his post because he was too brutal.
