I'm asking this because L.A. voted to replace Columbus day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
I found a few threads on this through the search bar, but I wanted to ask again to see if I can get a modern consensus (perhaps more primary sources have been discovered on the topic).
Here are some things I've heard about Columbus:
He forced indigenous people to fulfill a gold quota or he would chop off their hands.
When he fought the indigenous people he would feed wounded combatants to dogs.
He enslaved many indigenous people and forced them to work in brutal conditions, so that 1/3 of his slaves died every 8-10 months.
When his slaves escaped, he would hunt them down (not personally) and feed them to his dogs.
He forced 9-10 year old girls into sexual slavery.
When you consider that there were fewer people in the world, and that Columbus didn't have the technology to build gas chambers, it appears as if he is morally comparable to someone like Reinhard Heydrich or Heinrich Himmler.
I understand that some of these claims may have been exaggerated for the sake of selling books, or for television and whatnot, so would someone versed in this area of history please determine whether or not these claims are true?
The evidence we have shows that Columbus acted with brutality (more towards indigenous people, but also to his own men) during his voyages and governerships, in his search for gold, slaves, and to keep control. However some of the most lurid allegations like the ones you mentioned are a conflation of the atrocities described by Bartolomé de las Casas in his book 'A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies' committed by the Spanish in general with the actions of Columbus himself, and the evidence doesn't actually tie Columbus specifically to them. However as admiral / governor, he was in large part responsible for what happened during his rule, even if he did not order everything himself.
I answered question 1 a few days ago. My full answer is in that link. The short answer is that there is evidence he forced indigenous people into a tribute system, but there's no evidence I could find that the punishment for failing to fulfil this quota was to have their hands chopped off. This story seems to be a conflation of the account of the tribute system instituted by Columbus with accounts by las Casas of other Spanish chopping off hands in a different time and place.
For question 2, 3, and 4, the use of dogs is described by de las Casas by the Spanish in general during their various conquests in the Caribbean and on the mainland, and is I think mentioned by Ferdinand Columbus in the biography of his father, though I don't have this in front of me at the moment, and Columbus definitely enslaved many people and forced them to work in brutal conditions, this was the basis of the economic system instituted on Hispaniola, and Columbus himself mentions enslaving Tainos many times in his letters.
For question 5, this allegation comes from a letter of Columbus describing the actions of other settlers, so can't really be said to be tied to Columbus primarily.