"'The Bear' is a composite narrative of the initiation and inheritance of Isaac McCaslin (born in 1867), the last direct male descendant of Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin, who purchased land from the Chickasaw Indians." --A William Faulkner Encyclopedia. A version of it was published as a short story in The Saturday Evening Post on May 9, 1942. It was subsequently incorporated into the author's novel Go Down, Moses (1942); but has since sometimes been published as a free-standing novella.