I second your salutation. And just to rehash what should be obvious:

"The whole terminology has changed," said James Kracht, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the Texas A&M College of Education and Human Development. "You don't hear people using the world 'discovery' anymore like they used to. 'Columbus discovers America.' Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?"

Ho hum. Every hero is somebody else's villain, etc.

Of course CC's discovery was for Europe, as a prelude to the 16th Century. The Norse and Chinese discoveries didn't amount to anything because there were no historical forces ready to take up those discoveries into a greater development. "Discovery" is on behalf of some purposeful endeavor, not just a meandering over the next hill to do a hunt and gather routine, as with the case of the indigenous peoples. The pre-Columbians' real historical discovery upon the arrival and expansion of the Europeans was that their nemesis had arrived.

What about the horrors native populations so often inflicted upon themselves? It isn't as if Europeans invented wars, slavery and disease exclusively: http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/08/06/cahokia/

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
from ‘Life of Brian’