[1] In the 1846 edition of Francis Parkman's study of the Plains Indians The Oregon Trail, the term "War Eagle" is used to describe the feathers in the headdress of various Dakota tribe members.

Another mythical story is told about an Auburn student who returns to the University after the war with an eagle who was wounded on the battlefield with him but he nursed back to health.

Without even huddling, the Auburn quarterback Lucy Hairston would yell "Bald Eagle," letting the rest of the team know that the play would be run at the tackle.

According to a 1998 article in the Auburn Plainsman,[4] the most likely origin of the "War Eagle" cry grew from a 1913 pep rally at Langdon Hall, where students had gathered the day before the annual football game against the University of Georgia.

This legend was originally published in the March 27, 1959, edition of the Auburn Plainsman and was conceived by then editorial page editor Jim Phillips.

Phillips has pressed several recent presidents of Auburn to research the true origin of the battle cry "before my fictitious story gets carved in stone."

Cheerleaders DeWit Stier and Harry "Happy" Davis (who later became executive secretary of the Alumni Association) helped care for the new bird.

It was put in a strong wire cage and taken to the Auburn football game against the University of South Carolina in Columbus, Georgia on Thanksgiving Day.

Others say it was given to a zoo due to the high cost of upkeep; there is even a rumor that it was stuffed and put in the John Bell Lovelace Athletic Museum.

After a short stay in one of the Wildlife Department's animal pens, the eagle was moved into a cage built by the Auburn's Delta chapter of Alpha Phi Omega fraternity.

Jon Bowden, a fraternity brother who had previously worked with hawks in Colorado and Missouri, volunteered to serve as the bird's trainer.

Auburn was playing the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and was trailing 10–13 in the eighth inning, but rallied in the ninth and scored 4 runs to win the game.

In 1964, on the morning of the football game against Tennessee, War Eagle III was seen by his trainer, A. Elwyn Hamer Jr., sitting on the ground next to his perch.

After several days of searching, the bird was found shot to death in a wooded area near Birmingham, Alabama, where the game was being played.

The Birmingham Downtown Action Committee found another golden eagle in the Jackson, Mississippi zoo and presented it to the Auburn student body in October 1964.

She lived in a large aviary—until torn down in 2003 the second largest single-bird enclosure in the country—that had been funded and constructed by the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity and named for A. Elwyn Hamer Jr., War Eagle III's first trainer who had been killed in a plane crash in December 1965.

The bird arrived in Auburn on March 3, 1981 and was taken to the Veterinary School where she was kept for a short period in order to be examined for any signs of shock from travel.

She was then transferred to a small cage until the annual "A Day" football game when she was presented to the University by the Birmingham Downtown Action Committee on May 9, 1981.

The bird was under the stewardship of the U.S. Government under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act and was on loan to the Auburn University Veterinary School.

McAlarney spent the night at the veterinary school while veterinarians made a futile effort to save the bird's life.

The bird originally came from St. Louis, Missouri, where she was seized by Federal agents as part of an illegal breeding operation and brought to Kentucky by wildlife biologist, Robert D. Smith, who managed the Bald Eagle and Osprey programs at Land Between the Lakes and just happened to have a son at Auburn.

Like War Eagle V, she was under the stewardship of the U.S. Government under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act and was on loan to the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine.

On February 8, 2002, War Eagle VI flew in Rice-Eccles Stadium as part of the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Tiger continued to make non-flying appearances at Auburn University events and for wildlife education to various organizations until her death on June 18, 2014, at age 34 shortly following cataract surgery.

The Jordan Vocational High School Band of Columbus, Georgia, under the direction of Bob Barr first performed the song during Auburn's 1955 season-opener versus Chattanooga.