Columbus never even set foot on the land that would later become the United States. That's the one thing that has always puzzled me about celebrating Columbus Day.
Columbus was in Puerto Rico, which is the United States.
He landed in the West Indies which counts as “North America.” The United States was a later phenomenon, as was Mexico and Canada.
According to records of the time, Columbus was accused of maltreating a lot of harmless natives and decimating the population. He was taken back to Spain in shackles. It’s hard for me to understand what would have moved Columbus to want to do that, even if they viewed him as a god. That isn’t what “good Catholics” were expected to do, though “good Catholics” are not immune from succumbing to vice. But the only witnesses we have records of today were others on his voyage and I sometimes wonder if jealousy or other issues played a part in distorting the account and they basically had a mutiny on the land part of the excursion. If so, Columbus handled it with utter class and set out again, this time with a different crew.