Lipan Apache Tribal Chairman Bernard Barcena said, "Our people believe that every step that we take is a prayer."

For nearly two centuries, Barcena's people shared one communal prayer to be recognized as a people.

"When somebody says to me, 'How can you claim to be an Indian? You look just like a Mexican,'" he said. "Well, you know, there used to be Coahuila in Texas. And that's who we are."

The Mexican state of Coahuila used to include parts of Texas. That's where Barcena's great-grandfather settled in the 1740s. But when Texas expanded and became a republic, it turned against the Indians within its borders.

"They just assimilated because it was safer to be Mexican than be Indians because they would kill you," Barcena said. "They maintained the stories in their families but never said who they were in public because they were being hunted."

That led to the erroneous belief that the Lipan Apaches had become extinct.

Tribal historian Nancy Minor has dedicated the last seven years to studying the Lipan Apaches.

"It must be crazy-making to grow up knowing you have a certain ethnicity and a certain heritage, and yet that's denied by the world," she said.

That changed last week. After 171 years of struggle, the Lipan Apaches received official recognition from the Texas Legislature.

"I cannot describe the emotion because it was like everything that the ancestors are is alive in us," Barcena said.

Barcena said he holds no anger for the past but only pride for how far his people have come.

"When our people went through that fire, we came out refined, and, as a people, we maintained ourselves. We maintained our integrity, we maintained our culture," he said.

Minor said perhaps something should be done in terms of written history.

"I think it's a question to rewrite history books -- righting old wrongs -- for historians to provide a more complete view of Texas history," she said.

About 2,500 Lipan Apaches call Texas home today, according to Barcena. They're scattered all across the state.