I see a lot of posts on social media outlining Columbus’s barbarity, but not many of them have any sources. I’m sure Columbus committed his fair share of atrocities, but was he really as bad as people claim?
Not discouraging further answers, but this question gets asked here a lot. See, e.g.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ole0o/was_christopher_columbus_really_a_terrible/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9mh8xx/how_accurate_is_it/e7et3j0/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/758vqt/monday_methods_indigenous_peoples_day_and/
He has journals where he writes about he and his crew’s interactions with the natives that include references to rape and murder and even trading minor things away such as plates in exchange for them fetching gold for him.
He was a shitty person and one of his earliest mentions of the natives speaks of him quipping about how their welcoming nature will make it easy to enslave them (or something to that effect) as well as how he was prepared to send as many back to his homeland as requested.