History Main / RaisedbyNatives

* In ''Fanfic/AllAmericanGirl'' a pony brought up as a patriotic... well, [[TitleDrop all-American girl]].

* ''Literature/Temeraire'': The eponymous character is effectively a lost prince of the Qing Dynasty who ends up entirely accidentally in the care of a British officer and becomes one of their most renowned soldiers. With the added wrinkle that he's a huge dragon and the branch of the military he serves in is the British aerial corps, alongside other dragons. Upon the revelation of his royal heritage, he goes to China on a diplomatic mission in the second book and ends up taking to local customs like a fish to water, mainly because they involve things like "being treated as equal to humans" and "eating cooked food instead of raw meat", and returns to Britain as an ardent advocate for dragon rights.

* In the 1981-1982 anime ''Anime/GodMars'', the protagonist Takeru Myoujin is an alien sent to earth to destroy it when he grows up. But due to growing up with the native earthlings, he grows found of them and refuses to set off the world destroying bomb he was sent to earth with. And the series' storyline then proceeds to have the evil aliens trying to get him to fulfill his original job or kill him so the bomb's fail-safe kicks in and blows up the earth anyways if they can't get him to do it willingly.

* ''Comicbook/ElfQuest'' has the story of Little Patch, a human raised by elves. (This is, however, somethng of an inversion, since the elves are descendants of stranded aliens.) When he grows up he returns to a human tribe, and thanks to his elfin upbringing eventually becomes a chief.

* Johanna Leonburger from ''Film/NewsOfTheWorld2020'' was taken in raised by Kiowa Native Americans after they raided her homestead and killed her family. She was quite young when this happened, as she only speaks Kiowa; what remains of her native German is broken and heavily accented.

** Captain Carrot (City Watch books) was raised by dwarves. Despite bordering on 7 foot and being the only dwarf who keeps bumping his head on the ceiling in mineshafts. (His dwarven name is literally translated as 'Head Banger'.) Unusually for this trope, Carrot wasn't merely raised by dwarves but actually ''is'' a dwarf, in every sense that matters to all but the most ultra-conservative, human-hating elements of dwarven society (and even they merely call his dwarfishness "debatable"). This becomes a plot point in both ''Literature/TheFifthElephant'' and ''Literature/{{Thud}}''. [[note]]The similarity to Judaism is quite deliberate; Discworld dwarves are basically the [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame nigh-universal]] CultureChopSuey of [[{{Scotireland}} Celtic]], {{Nor|seByNorsewest}}dic and [[GreedyJew stereotypical Jewish]] traits by someone familiar with more than TheThemeParkVersion of the three constituent cultures.[[/note]]
** From ''Literature/GoingPostal'' we have Stanley, who was abandoned on a farm and raised by peas (yes, not ''on'' peas, but ''by'' peas) and so tends to turn gently to face the sun. He manages to be rather better-adjusted to non-vegetable society than one might expect.

* In ''I Am Regina'' by Sally Keehn, Regina is a colonial settler kidnapped by Allegheny Indians. She is raised by them, and they grow to love each other. Later on she is found and brought back to her mother, only remembering a few words of English.
* ''Literature/TheKharkanasTrilogy'': Korya Delat was raised by a lone [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Jaghut]] named Haut following her people's tradition of exchanging hostages. Even though the Jaghut do not follow that tradition, the Tiste just dropped off a kid of vaguely noble blood which nobody wanted in Jaghut lands and called it a day. Since there's no mention of Korya's parents and everyone back home seems to have forgotten of her existence, she likely is an orphan. Now, even though Haut ''does'' try his best to educate her properly, the Jaghut are big proponents of the MiseryBuildsCharacter approach and live in solitary towers in the middle of nowhere, so Korya ends up with a heaping of NoSocialSkills. Unfortunately, shortly before she comes of age, civil war breaks out in her home realm and makes a return impossible. Still, Tiste culture comes a-knockin' with another Tiste youth getting dropped off with the Jaghut and shows Korya how enstranged she's become from her own people.

* ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'' by Creator/RobertAHeinlein has Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians after the first crewed exploration mission all died, and returned to Earth by the second. The Martians teach him their language-philosophy, how to use his puny human brain to use amazing powers, and to [[spoiler: spy on humanity to [[HumanityOnTrial determine whether they should or shouldn't blow us up]], like they did to the intelligent race on the "fifth" planet between Mars and Jupiter. You know, the ''asteroid belt?'']] He starts out as an IdiotSavant, and ends as [[spoiler:a MessianicArchetype.]]
* Ilox in ''Literature/TheWildBoy''. He was raised by wild 'wolf' humans after the Lindauzi kicked him out. So it's also RaisedByWolves in a sense, but not literal wolves like that trope means. They accepted him after a while, but he did get regarded nervously because he was Lindauzi-bred. The 'wolves' he, Phlarx and Caleb take up with later do the same thing to a point.

* Brought up in Chapter 8 of ''Series/TheMandalorian''. Having returned to Navarro at the beginning of the previous episode, Mando and company escape from Moff Gideon’s army of stormtroopers by [[spoiler: escaping into the sewers the Mandalorian tribe makes its home in.]] Upon seeing The Child, [[spoiler: the Armorer]] tells the protagonist that in Mandalorian culture, The Child is a foundling and that Mando has to either raise it as a Mandalorian, or return it to its own kind. As interesting as the idea of a Yoda Mandalorian is, The Child is barely equivalent to a human toddler at fifty years old, and Mando would likely be long since dead by the time it’s old enough to be a proper Mandalorian warrior.
** The Mandalorian himself could even be seen as this. The first three episodes feature a number of flashbacks to his home village during a Separatist attack during the Clone Wars, culminating in his parents killed and a super battle droid aiming its wrist blasters at him. Episode eight finally plays the full version of the flashback. [[spoiler: his parents place him in what seems to be an underground shelter of some kind, barely getting the door closed before they themselves are killed. The super battle droid opens it and before it can kill the young protagonist, a yellow blaster bolt destroys it. A member of the Mandalorian Death Watch splinter group helps the young boy out of the shelter and carries him to safety with his jet pack, as his allies fight off the droids.]]

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVII'' has Firia, a HeartwarmingOrphan who was adopted by the Pendragon, leader of the WingedHumanoid Lefa tribe. As the only person in Gorges without wings, she has difficulty getting around, and is constantly bullied by the other kids. Her own little sister treats her like a personal slave! Yet she endures it all with a smile, until [[spoiler: her grandmother reveals she's Lefan by blood. She was just born without wings, and her cowardly father decided it'd be better to pretend he merely adopted her than admit she was his own flesh and blood, for fear he'd be ousted as leader if anyone knew he's fathered a 'flawed child']].
* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', a Dark Elf shopkeeper in Riften mentions he was raised by Argonians, and follows many of their traditions and customs, even taking a Argonian name. He gives you a quest to find out who his real parents were and where they came from. [[spoiler:Turns out he's the son of a House Telvanni woman.]]

** A batarian was raised by human parents, and founded an extranet organization dedicated to connecting children of various racial and ethnic backgrounds so that they would understand, tolerate, and befriend each other to make the galaxy a better place.
** Mention is made of some vorcha raised by asari, who turned out quite well-educated and civilized. They attempted to found a civilized vorcha colony world to become part of the galactic community, but it unfortunately failed within a few generations. As a short-lived ExplosiveBreeder race they simply churned out too many children too fast to keep up and the asari (who have a lifespan of about one thousand years) found it heartbreaking to keep watching vorcha (who have a lifespan of about twenty years) mature and die of old age in such a short time.

* [[spoiler: Sari]] from ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'' is this, raised on Earth by a human parent. Its actually a major plot point for the start of the third season.

* Episode "The Discovery" of ''Series/{{Dinosaurs}}'' has a dinosaur girl raised by cavemen who in the show are stand-ins for Native Americans.
* Brought up in Chapter 8 of ''Series/TheMandalorian''. Having returned to Navarro at the beginning of the previous episode, Mando and company escape from Moff Gideon’s army of stormtroopers by [[spoiler: escaping into the sewers the Mandalorian tribe makes its home in.]] Upon seeing The Child, [[spoiler: the Armorer]] tells the protagonist that in Mandalorian culture, The Child is a foundling and that Mando has to either raise it as a Mandalorian, or return it to its own kind. As interesting as the idea of a Yoda Mandalorian is, The Child is barely equivalent to a human toddler at fifty years old, and Mando would likely be long since dead by the time it’s old enough to be a proper Mandalorian warrior.
** The Mandalorian himself could even be seen as this. The first three episodes feature a number of flashbacks to his home village during a Separatist attack during the Clone Wars, culminating in his parents killed and a super battle droid aiming its wrist blasters at him. Episode eight finally plays the full version of the flashback. [[spoiler: his parents place him in what seems to be an underground shelter of some kind, barely getting the door closed before they themselves are killed. The super battle droid opens it and before it can kill the young protagonist, a yellow blaster bolt destroys it. A member of the Mandalorian Death Watch splinter group helps the young boy out of the shelter and carries him to safety with his jet pack, as his allies fight off the droids.]]

* ''VideoGame/WarCraft'': Thrall was raised by humans. To elaborate, orcs are not native to the world of Azeroth, unlike humans. Also, Thrall wasn't exactly ''raised'' by Blackmoore. The guy wanted an orc he could control to eventually lead the captive orcs to take over the world.

%% * The main character from ''VideoGame/BeneathASteelSky''.
* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun''
** Ivan was entrusted by his Adept family to (soon-to-be) Lord Hammet and Lady Layana of Kalay, along with some business advice to ensure that he grew up comfortably in the right place at the right time to join and help Isaac & Co., in fulfillment of a prophecy.
** Sheba fell from the sky near Lalivero as a small child and was promptly adopted by Faran's family. It's [[WildMassGuessing generally assumed by fandom]] that she came from [[spoiler: the city of the Anemos Jupiter Adepts, which was removed from mainland Weyard and became [[ThatsNoMoon the moon]] hundreds of years ago]]. The fact that Sheba herself is a Jupiter Adept supports this.
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVII'' has Firia, a HeartwarmingOrphan who was adopted by the Pendragon, leader of the WingedHumanoid Lefa tribe. As the only person in Gorges without wings, she has difficulty getting around, and is constantly bullied by the other kids. Her own little sister treats her like a personal slave! Yet she endures it all with a smile, until [[spoiler: her grandmother reveals she's Lefan by blood. She was just born without wings, and her cowardly father decided it'd be better to pretend he merely adopted her than admit she was his own flesh and blood, for fear he'd be ousted as leader if anyone knew he's fathered a 'flawed child']].
* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', a Dark Elf shopkeeper in Riften mentions he was raised by Argonians, and follows many of their traditions and customs, even taking a Argonian name. He gives you a quest to find out who his real parents were and where they came from. [[spoiler:Turns out he's the son of a House Telvanni woman.]]
* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', Lanaya of Zathrian's Dalish clan mentions that as a young girl, her city elf parents were murdered by bandits who kept her alive for use as a [[RapeAsBackstory sex slave]]. She was rescued several years later when the bandits made the mistake of venturing too near a Dalish camp and killed one of their scouts, causing their leader [[PapaWolf Zathrian]] to personally come after the bandits and utterly ''[[PayEvilUntoEvil destroy]]'' them! Because she reminded him of his own lost daughter, he adopted Lanaya and trained her as his apprentice.

%% Zero Context Examples are prohibited. Before uncommenting an entry, please provide context for how it fits the trope.

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1325739286023160100
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* From Franchise/TheDCU, ComicBook/JonahHex, although he wasn't orphaned. His drunken father sold him as a slave to the Apaches.
%% ** Firehair
* James-Michael from ''ComicBook/OmegaTheUnknown'' is orphaned by his [[spoiler: robot]] parents and is put into the care of two locals in Hell's Kitchen, who try to teach TheStoic how to BecomeARealBoy.
* ''Comicbook/ElfQuest'' has the story of Little Patch, a human raised by elves. (This is, however, somethng of an inversion, since the elves are descendants of stranded aliens.) When he grows up he returns to a human tribe, and thanks to his elfin upbringing eventually becomes a chief.
* ''ComicBook/SheenaQueenOfTheJungle'' was raised by a native witch doctor after he accidentally poisoned her father.
* ComicBook/RomVsTransformersShiningArmor features Stardrive, a GiantMecha from the Cybertronian colony world of Caminus who is aboard a ship attacked by the Galactic Council. Her helpless infant form is quickly rescued by [[KnightInShiningArmor Rom the Space Knight]], sustained by the scientist of his home planet Elonia, and she is raised in Elonian society. The Elonians see her Cybertronian heritage as a [[AlwaysChaoticEvil potential danger to others]] because Elonians are [[PlanetOfHats a unified and peaceful culture]] while their only knowledge on Cybertronians comes from being in the crossfire of the Autobot-Decepticon war (Rom himself doesn't seem to understand that the Transformers are divided into factions ''at all'', and believes them all to have a unified culture of violence and destruction). Stardrive herself becomes a Space Knight in hopes of putting her [[InternalizedCategorism "natural bloodthirst"]] to positive use.

* Faust, and several of the other Sparklings in ''[[FanFic/ThingsWeDontTellHumans Things We Don't Tell Humans]]'': The natives are humans, and the children are sentient alien robots, whose lifespans are much longer than their adoptive parents'...

* Similar to the above is ''Fanfic/TwoWorldsOneFamily'' except Harry was left as a human.
* And the opposite of that is ''Fanfic/AllAmericanGirl'', a pony brought up as a patriotic... well, [[TitleDrop all-American girl]].

* This is a cultural imperative for griffons in the [[FanFic/TriptychContinuum Triptych Continuum]]. They believe that if a child is brought into the world, it ''must'' be raised to adulthood, and to attack a child is the highest of crimes. Should the parents die, someone else will always take over: no griffon is ever an orphan for more than a day. But in the deep past, when griffons went to war and the crying foals of the enemy were found... that belief was extended to them, and they were gently scooped up and flown to their new homes. Centuries later, the Republic has a significant pony population, virtually all of whom are the descendants of those children -- and those ponies were generally raised as and perceive themselves as being griffons. This also applies to ''every species the griffons have ever fought''.

* ''Fanfic/BesidesTheWillOfEvil'': After falling off of Cloudsdale as a filly, Fluttershy remained stranded on the ground (as she was still unable to fly well) and was found and adopted by a tribe of mule deer living in the Everfree Forest.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Film/LittleIndianBigCity'' and its [[ForeignRemake American remake]] ''Film/Jungle2Jungle''. The child's mother has chosen to live in an Amazonian tribe and she's the one who raised him, but as she's fully integrated, the child ends up being brought up pretty much like the other native children.

* In ''Film/{{Elf}}'', the protagonist crawls inside Santa's bag as an infant and is taken to the North Pole. With no way of knowing where he had come from, Santa raises him as one of the elves. He still doesn't figure it out when he grows over ''six feet tall''.
* ''Film/LittleBigMan'': The title character is a young homesteader whose family is killed by Native Americans, and he is adopted into another tribe. He's later taken back into white society and spends the rest of his life caught between white society and Native American society.
* ''Film/TheEmeraldForest'' is about an American boy who is abducted by an Amazonian tribe and raised by them for ten years before being discovered by his father and brought back to America, where he is completely out of place.
* In ''Film/RevengeOfTheVirgins'', Yellow Gold was abducted as a child and raised by Indians. Because of her golden blonde hair, [[GodGuise they regard her as a goddess]].
* Johanna Leonburger from ''Film/NewsOfTheWorld2020'' was taken in raised by Kiowa Native Americans after they raided her homestead and killed her family. She was quite young when this happened, as she only speaks Kiowa; what remains of her native German is broken and heavily accented.

* In Conrad Richter's ''Light in the Forest'', a young white boy is captured by Native Americans in a raid. They raise him as their own, renaming him True Son. Eleven years later, he thinks of himself as completely Indian and does not remember his life with his real family. He is forced to leave his Indian family and return to his white family after a treaty is signed and all white "prisoners" were given up. When he returns to his white family he is unable to reconnect with them and runs away. However, when he returns his Indian father tells him he must return and accept his heritage.
* ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'' by Creator/RobertAHeinlein has Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians after the first crewed exploration mission all died, and returned to Earth by the second. The Martians teach him their language-philosophy, how to use his puny human brain to use amazing powers, and to [[spoiler: spy on humanity to [[HumanityOnTrial determine whether they should or shouldn't blow us up]], like they did to the intelligent race on the "fifth" planet between Mars and Jupiter. You know, the ''asteroid belt?'']] He starts out as an IdiotSavant, and ends as [[spoiler:a MessianicArchetype.]]
* G. A. Henty's ''By Right of Conquest'' features an interesting twist on this. Roger Hawkshaw is the sole survivor of a shipwreck off the Yucatan coast and finds himself taken in by a village on the outskirts of the Aztec empire; everything else wobbles about this trope up through when Hernan Cortez arrives. Unfortunately, by this time most of the Aztecs don't particularly like him much, and the reason Roger was shipwrecked in the first place was part of a British attempt to break the international (Pope-mandated) division of the New World between the Spanish and Portuguese. XanatosSpeedChess ensues.

* M.M. Kaye's ''The Far Pavilions'' has the MightyWhitey variant, who even ends up with an exotic Far East princess.
* Creator/RudyardKipling's ''Literature/{{Kim}}''. The title character is raised by a Hindu (Hindoo) attorney from Bengal, a Muslim warrior (specifically a Pashtun/Pathan tribesman from the foothills of Afghanistan), a Buddhist monk from Tibet, and a British colonel. The product: Kimball O'Hara: Friend of the Stars/Friend of All the World, the perfect warrior for the Great Game.

* Nefret Forth, in the ''Literature/AmeliaPeabody'' series, fits this trope morally if not factually. Her parents were 19th-century explorers who discovered a remnant of ancient Egyptian civilization in a lost oasis and spent the rest of their lives there, GoingNative in varying degrees. When Amelia and her family arrive, they find the 13-year-old Nefret being high priestess of Isis. Her parents being dead by the end of the book, Nefret goes back to Western civilization with the Emersons, where she has a realistically rough time fitting in.
* Nobody "Bod" Owens, hero of ''Literature/TheGraveyardBook'', was orphaned just before the book starts, as a toddler, and wanders into a graveyard, where he is taken in and raised by ghosts. The whole book is a translation of ''Literature/TheJungleBook'' into the new setting, so this case wavers between this and RaisedByWolves.
* Bria in ''Literature/TheLastDove'' is often mocked in the village of bird people where she was raised because she hasn't yet been able to change into a bird. She later turns out to be able to [[spoiler: turn into both a dove and a wolf.]]

* Creator/MikhailAkhmanov's ''Dick Simon'' duology has the titular character be the son of a xenobiologist living in a small human colony on the high-G world of Tayahat. The locals are primitive {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s with four arms. Dick's father spends a lot of time studying their culture and the local wildlife, leaving his son to be trained by a Taya friend of his. Thus, Dick is raised to be a warrior, working extra hard to compete with the native {{Heavyworlder}}s. When Dick grows up, he leaves Tayahat to train at the Academy, where he's taught different arts (of the special forces variety) by a red-haired Texan. He especially loves missions involving woods and jungles, when he can strip off everything but a loincloth and become a beast stalking his prey. He also has a pet snake (a large Tayahat semi-sentient snake), inherited from his Taya mentor.
* In H. De Vere Stacpoole's ''The Garden of God'' (sequel to ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon''), the son of the original couple falls for Katafa, a Spanish girl raised by Kanaka natives. Stacpoole, who despised racism, described the Kanaka as intelligent, complex human beings; but Katafa seems to have been Spanish because readers wouldn't have accepted young Dick marrying a Kanaka beauty.

* In the ''Literature/{{Gatling}}'' series, Gatling is an orphan who was raised by Zuni Indians after his parents were killed by Apaches.