Columbus Day is only five months away, and Americans will once again celebrate the life of one of the most despicable men ever to walk on the face of the planet.

As a young man, Christopher Columbus obsessed about finding an ocean route to Asia, and he looked for someone to finance a voyage west across the Atlantic Ocean.

When Columbus approached King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and told them of his idea, he argued that he would convert the Asian “heathens” to Catholicism, and would find enough gold to help them continue their holy war against the Muslims and Jews. Under the Inquisition at that time, the penalty for not being Christian was death, forced conversion or expulsion.

Ferdinand and Isabella apparently thought this argument was noble and just, so they financed Columbus’ first voyage to the New World. In September 1492, Columbus set sail with three ships and around 90 men.

At the end of the 15th century, every educated man in Europe knew the world was round, but Columbus seriously underestimated the distance from the west coast of Europe to the east coast of Asia. By October, his crew almost mutinied on him, but they decided to give it a few more days before turning back.

Columbus had promised a reward of 10,000 maravedis (about a year’s pay for sailors) to the first person who spotted land. On October 12, a few days after the near mutiny, Rodrigo de Triana did just that. However, instead of giving him the money, Columbus said that he had seen land a few days before, and he pocketed the cash for himself. This kind of greed summed up the majority of his life.

When Columbus and his men arrived in San Salvador, the friendly natives swam out to meet them. Immediately, Columbus began to prepare his conquest.

“They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance,” he wrote in his log. “They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

By making a number of false promises to Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus was given another voyage the next year with 17 ships and almost 1,500 men. This time the Spaniards were out for blood, and they went from island to island taking slaves, raping women, killing children and looking for gold that was never really there.

All natives over the age of 14 had a gold quota they needed to collect every three months, and they were killed if that quota was not met. Since there was virtually no gold in the Caribbean islands, the natives were hunted down and exterminated or taken back to Europe as slaves. In two years, Columbus and his men were responsible for 125,000 deaths on the island of Haiti alone – a full-scale genocide. By 1550, all but 500 of the original 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead, and by 1650 they were completely extinct.

Bartolome de las Casas, who was one of the only Spaniards to speak out against Columbus, described the atrocities being committed.

“Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy;” he said. “Small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then… [Columbus], it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…”

By Columbus’ death in 1506, de las Casas estimated the Spaniards had already killed close to three million Indians. Columbus’ legacy would live on for generations to come, however, as the Europeans did not stop their policy of genocide or near-genocide toward the Native Americans until the beginning of the 20th century. By that time, they had killed millions and millions of people and had virtually extinguished two entire continents of their native populations.

Despite all of this, the majority of Americans (and Europeans) treat Columbus as a hero, and elementary school kids learn about his heroic voyage for God and glory. There is even a day named in his honor for “discovering” America, though the Indians had already lived there for thousands of years, and Viking and probably African sailors had also already seen the New World. This is not to mention the fact he landed in America completely by luck, and was convinced it was Asia until the day he died.

Proponents of Columbus Day say it should be a celebration of Western civilization, but Columbus’ racism, greed, theft, deceit, intolerance and Christian evangelism are a combination of the worst things Western culture has to offer. If people still want to get a Monday off from work in October, let’s pick someone else to honor instead.