Early explorers did things that wouldn't fit into our view of acceptable behavior. You are hoping to replace Columbus with multiple Columbuses each with the same track record as the one you hope to replace.
Personally, I like Columbus day, I like the discussion, and the critical thinking it brings.
Its important to note that many celebrated foundations of our civilization would be despicable in modern standards. For example, the Romans were the original fascists despite the cultural hegemony they imposed upon Europe.
He was despicable by the standards of the day, too. It's not like morality is a modern invention, as apologists claim. ("Oh, thou shalt NOT kill?")
Columbus was such a terrorist, he and his brothers were chained, shipped back to Spain and imprisoned for his crimes as governor. Even after the monarchy overruled the Court of Spain, he was stripped of his governorship. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Governorsh...)
Las Casas wrote, "Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons."
Of course, none of this made for great propaganda. So in Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, the story of Columbus changed to, "and in all the other parts of the new world which he ever visited, nothing but a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by some tribes of naked and miserable savages."
If there's anything for us to do in the modern day, it's to be more aware of the atrocities we commit, which we glibly accept as the "standard of the day", even though many fight against them. (For example, against war, massive imprisonment and wage slavery).
Personally, I think it should be "Genocide Day". Not every holiday should be upbeat. A time of reflection and introspection.
Personally, I like Columbus day, I like the discussion, and the critical thinking it brings.
Its important to note that many celebrated foundations of our civilization would be despicable in modern standards. For example, the Romans were the original fascists despite the cultural hegemony they imposed upon Europe.