Colonel Custard was partly responsible for the Seventh Cavalry defeat at Little Big Horn.
Firstly, he turned down the offer from General Terry to have 180 extra men. Custard thought his Seventh Cavalry was enough but obviously he was oblivious to the amount of men he was going to face.
Secondly, when Colonel Custer found the Indian trail and the village, he attacked it with his men without waiting for the rest of the men. It sounds like he might have had a big head, and thought he could get all of the glory by just going ahead with his men and winning. If Custer had waited for the rest of the men, then the outcome of this battle could have drastically changed. His scouts even told him not to! Another thing he did that wasn’t so smart is that he split his men into three groups, which definitely did not help because it just weakened them and allowed the Indians to kill Custer and his men separately.
Also, I believe that Custer pushed his men a little too hard. He expected a little too much, and in the end it didn’t work out anyways.
But not everything was Colonel Custer’s fault. For example even if Custer had taken the extra 180 men with him, it probably wouldn’t have made a very large impact on the outcome of the battle considering the Indians had thousands fighting for their side. (About triple the size of Custer’s army) Custer also didn’t know how well the Sioux could fight, or that they were better armed than his army was. If Custer would have known these things, than the outcome of the battle definitely would have been different than what it was.
In conclusion, I believe that Colonel Custer was partly responsible for the bad outcome of the battle. But I think it’s leaning more towards him because of a lot of his decisions could have prevented a lot of things from happening if he had just thought about it a little more.