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Columbus Day came and went last week. Most people celebrated by going shopping or doing what-not and giving Christopher Columbus no thought at all.

Except for the anti-Columbus people, that is. They came forward as always to revile the man, belittle his accomplishments, and bemoan the dismantling of the indigenous civilizations by European guns and diseases.

My favorite jab at Columbus this year was, “Saying Columbus discovered America is like walking into a grocery store and saying you discovered milk.”

For the record, I agree with the critics that Columbus was, if I may be blunt, scheming, ruthless, and downright villainous.

As for Columbus Day, however, I can’t decide. I’m not sure whether it should be renamed, done away with, or left alone.

When I was a kid, we learned in school that Christopher Columbus was an intrepid explorer and gallant captain who stumbled upon amazing new lands and exotic new people, and he opened up a new world that the European powers soon would civilize and make their own, and that’s why our great nation is here today.

As I got older, they fleshed out the story. They explained that the natives were susceptible to European diseases and died in droves, that they were used as slave labor, and that they never had a chance as waves of white settlers washed over two continents.

Those candid admissions addressed the consequences, but left intact the sterling image of the man himself. Only in adulthood did I finally get a better picture — that Columbus was as flawed as the rest of us, and then some.

Before I make my case about that, some points.

Point one: Columbus did not discover America. Not only was the place already occupied, but the explorer Leif Erikson had established a Norse colony in Newfoundland 500 years earlier.

At the time, Europe was distracted by the Crusades, so hardly anyone knew about it except the Vikings.

Point two: Columbus did not prove that the world is round. That story is a myth — mere fancy. As far back as Aristotle, educated Europeans understood that the world is round, not shaped like a pizza.

Point three: A common story is that the rulers of Portugal and Spain balked at financing Columbus because they feared his ships would sail off the edge of the pizza.

Not so. They thought Columbus underestimated the distance to Asia and couldn’t possibly carry enough supplies to get there.

They were right. Columbus had enough provisions to cross the Atlantic Ocean. But, had the Americas not been in the way, he and his party likely would have starved somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Point four: Columbus is said to have called the native people he encountered “Indians” because he thought he was in India. Not exactly.

In the time of Columbus, the country of India was called Hindustan. The terms India and the Indies referred to all of South and Southeast Asia, from Pakistan to the Philippines. Ergo, Indians to Columbus meant Asians.

SO — what leads me to call Christopher Columbus a scheming and ruthless villain? The evidence does.

On October 12, 1492, Columbus and his men made landfall on an island in the Bahamas. Convinced he had reached Asia as intended, Columbus claimed the land for the Spanish crown.

Living in the region was a peaceful and friendly group, the Taino, who traded goods with the crew.

Columbus wrote that the Taino “brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus also noted in his journal that the Taino adorned themselves with modest pieces of gold jewelry. It was the beginning of the end for the Taino.

After exploring the coast of Cuba, Columbus built a small settlement on Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), left 39 men to occupy it, and returned to Spain.

Ferdinand and Isabella greeted him with much pomp, named him “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” and appointed him governor general of the lands he had discovered.

In October 1493, Columbus set sail again, this time with a fleet of 17 ships, 1,500 colonists, and 20 horseman for shock and awe purposes. His goal was to bring back to Spain “as much gold as they need” and “as many slaves as they ask.”

He returned to Hispaniola to find the Taino in open revolt, the settlement destroyed, and the 39 men massacred.

One of the officers later wrote, “Bad feeling had arisen and had broken out in warfare because of the licentious conduct of our men towards the Indian women, for each Spaniard had five women to minister to his pleasure.”

Columbus built a new settlement and a string of forts, then came down hard on the Taino. His soldiers invaded the interior of the island. Thousands of Taino were killed.

Columbus also put in place a quasi-feudal system called encomienda. The word means entrust in Spanish.

Under encomienda, each colonist was given legal responsibility for a certain number of the Taino. The colonists were to grant protection to the natives and instruct them in the Spanish language and the Catholic faith. In return, they extracted tribute in the form of labor, goods, and gold.

Specifically, Columbus required a quarterly tribute in gold from every Taino over the age of 14. If a Taino could not meet the quota, a hand was cut off, and the victim was left to bleed to death.

Not satisfied with the amount of gold being taken in, Columbus accelerated the shipping of Taino slaves to Spain.

In 1495, Columbus and his men raided the interior again and captured 1,500 men, women, and children. The 500 best specimens were shipped to Spain to be sold.

After 200 of the captives died en route, Columbus said, “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”

Columbus had the Taino under control, but he began having trouble with his own men. The gold-obsessed colonists were near mutiny, claiming that Columbus was an ineffective leader and had misled them about the riches they would find. Some of them commandeered a ship and returned to Spain to complain.

Apparently, they made a good case against Columbus. Spain promptly sent a royal official to Hispaniola who arrested Columbus and stripped him of his authority. He was taken back to Spain in chains to face the royal court.

The charges later were dropped, but Columbus lost his titles and much of the riches he made during his voyages. He spent the last few years of his life trying to repair his reputation and regain his lost titles and wealth. He died in 1506, still trying.

Without question, the four voyages of Columbus opened the door to European colonization of the Americas. They set in motion a huge transfer of ideas and commodities, known as the Columbian Exchange, that affected the entire world.

Potatoes and corn from the Americas eventually became staples in Europe. Wheat from Europe became a major food source in the New World. Sugar cane from Asia and coffee from Africa became important cash crops in Latin America. The horse enabled the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains to become hunters.

Diseases also were spread, but the effects hit the indigenous Americans hardest. The Taino population when Columbus arrived was between half a million and eight million. By 1542, a census showed that only 200 Taino remained alive.

Yet, the fate of the Taino was just a small part of the story.

Because of the scarcity of data, estimates of the pre-Columbian population of North and South America are iffy. Most scholars think it was between 30 and 50 million.

Within a few generations of the arrival of the Europeans, repeated outbreaks of disease (smallpox, measles, whooping cough, bubonic plague, typhoid, influenza, malaria, yellow fever) virtually emptied the Americas of their native inhabitants.

Largely because of disease, as many as 21 million indigenous Americans died.

As I said, I’m ambivalent about having a holiday that honors Christopher Columbus. The legacy is important, even if the man lacked the character we expect in a genuine hero.

I have one last anecdote about Columbus that I believe is revealing of that character.

On October 12, 1492, at two hours after midnight, a lookout on the Nina cried out, “Tierra! Tierra! (Land! Land!)”

Surely, the lookout was doubly ecstatic, because Spain had promised a huge reward to the man who saw land first — a pension equal to the annual pay of an able-bodied seaman for the rest of his life.

The lookout did not get the reward. Columbus announced that he had seen several lights the evening before, and he claimed the reward for himself.

“First landing of Columbus on the shores of the New World, at San Salvador, W.I., Oct. 12th 1492,” by Dióscoro Teófilo Puebla Tolín, 1862.