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This expression was originally used to accept impending hardship with fortitude; but in the modern-day is generally used in lighter terms, such as to advise someone to do something that they don't particularly want to do.
Sources of this expression all trace back to the military, with at least three variations:
Some say that back in the days when soldiers wounded on the battlefield were treated without the benefits of anesthesia, they bit down on a bullet either to distract themselves from the pain or to avoid cracking their teeth by biting down too hard; or simply to avoid crying out. However The Phrase Finder questions this source, pointing out that many artists, including Rembrandt and Hieronymus Bosch, painted scenes of early surgery and none show patients biting on anything.
Others say that it originates around the mid 1850s when a new type of rifle was issued to the Sepoys (native Indian soldiers who fought for the British) which used greased paper cartridges. The cartridge had to be bitten in order to release the powder and the Sepoys objected on religious grounds - the Muslims concerned that the fat used for the grease was from pigs and the Hindus expressing similar concerns that the fat came from cows - but were told by their commanding officers to get over their religious qualms and "bite the bullet." While the events as stated did happen, and were a catalyst for the Indian Rebellion of 1857, there is no conclusive evidence that the expression originates from there.
Instead, the likely source appears to be supplied in the definition of a "nightingale" found in the pages of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, edited by Francis Crose and published in 1796.
Nightingale. A soldier who, as the term is, sings out at the halberts. It is a point of honour in some regiments, among the grenadiers, never to cry out, or become nightingales, whilst under the discipline of the cat of nine tails; to avoid which, they chew a bullet.
Whatever the source, by the Victorian era, the expression was in ready use as part of the "stiff upper lip" mentality; and by the early 20th century had lost its military connotation and was used in a much more jovial context such as by P.G. Wodehouse's character Bertie Wooster in The Inimitable Jeeves (1923): "Brace up and bite the bullet. I'm afraid I've bad news for you."
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