Was Custer to blame for the defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn Essay Example

weren't able to fight as well as usual.Mitch Bouyer told him upon arrival "If we go in there, we'll never come out".

He refused to listen to this, divided his army into three columns (further weakening it) and tried to attacked overwhelming numbers of warriors without knowing the lie of the land. Subsequently, this may have been the fatal error losing the battle. However, the fault may have rested upon his subordinate officers, Reno and Benteen. They didn't try to force Custer to follow orders and wait for Gibbon and Terry as well as they could and should have done.They also didn't complain to Custer about his choice of splitting the army into even smaller divisions which weakened the army's performance as a whole.

The fact remains that Reno could have gone to Custer's assistance whilst he was surrounded - Custer had sent a message requesting just that. Instead, he retreated across the river taking up a defensive position, he didn't go to Custer's aid, and moreover, he didn't 'press home' the attack.Custer's superiors, including Terry and Sheridan could also have been partly responsible for the battle being lost. The US army supplied only a mere six bullets a year for target practice which shows how inexperienced some of the soldiers were. Their plan to attack the Indians may have been too ambitious.

They relied on evidence which was simply out of date, and also relied on a preconception that the Indians would run away (their usual tactic) after an attack. Naturally, this was one time that the Indians would change their tactics!What's more, is that they actually let Custer strike out on a battle

on his own despite knowing that he was an arrogant man wanting nothing but glory - at all costs. This could have been their worst downfall. There was no scouting ahead from the superiors, nor a great deal from Crook who was overcome by Indians at Rosebud Creek (after not having liaised very much with the superiors in question). Differently, there are some historians that believe it not to be the US army that failed, but the Sioux and their allies that had changed their battle tactics enough to have beaten them.

Crazy Horse's battle tactics, for example, seemed to have followed a plan - not something that the Indians used to do. He had told the Indians to surround Custer and his men (a commonly used US tactic. In this case, the Indians had copied). There was also an unusually high number of Indians (between 2,000 and 4,000), whereas the Bureau of Indian Affairs had predicted only 800. Whilst respecting Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the Indians were (unusually) prepared to fight with high losses as the outcome with their new pitched-battle tactics.

The US army had underestimated the Indians in this respect, and this is an important factor whilst considering responsibility of the defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Therefore, in conclusion, I believe it is to be mostly General Custer's recklessness and his narcissistic, egotistic pride which blinded him into the battle. This linked in with the other factors I have mentioned (his subordinates, his superiors, and the Sioux for the aforementioned reasons) are what I believe to have caused the defeat of the US army at the Battle of Little Bighorn.