MASHPEE, Mass. (AP) – The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe finally received federal government recognition as a sovereign American Indian nation Thursday after 32 years of legal wrangling.

Their ancestors were at Plymouth long before the Pilgrims arrived and they shared a first historic Thanksgiving before their numbers were nearly destroyed by bloody war and disease.

Now, four centuries later, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs has made them the state’s second officially recognized tribe, a designation that could help bring casino gambling to Massachusetts.

The approval had been expected since the tribe got preliminary approval last year and no challenges arose.

The tribe’s elders and members gathered Thursday at their tribal seat in expectation of a phone call that came from the Bureau of Indian Affairs at 5:10 p.m.

“I’m going to cry a lot. The elders put us on this path in 1974,” tribal council chairman Glenn Marshall said about the arduous recognition process.

Workers erected a heated tent large enough for 500 people next to a stand of trees for a dinner to celebrate the announcement. The roughly 1,500 members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe learned last March that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had given their bid preliminary approval.

In September, Mashpee town officials endorsed the recognition request after the tribe agreed not to build a casino on Cape Cod or try to use the courts to take possession of privately owned land.

The tribe has been open about its desire to build a casino outside its tribal lands, if Massachusetts alters its laws to permit it.

Gov. Deval Patrick said Thursday he supported the tribe’s bid for federal recognition.

Asked about the potential implications for gambling and casinos in Massachusetts, Patrick said representatives of the tribe have already been in to see him and “they know that we are committed to working closely with them on all matters of shared concern.”

The Mashpee are the second Massachusetts tribe to receive federal recognition after the Wampanoag of Gay Head-Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard.

Members of the Mashpee tribe lived in Plymouth when the Pilgrims arrived and dined with the English settlers at the first Thanksgiving. The harmony gave way to a brief period of bloody war.

The tribe dominated the population and politics of the town of Mashpee until the 1960s, when construction of new homes transformed the town and much of the rest of the Cape.

In December, four Mashpee Wampanoag tribal council members filed a complaint in Barnstable Superior Court asking a judge to open up the tribe’s financial records. The complaint alleged mismanagement and claimed a Detroit real estate magnate and casino developer had given millions of dollars to the tribe to facilitate its recognition effort.

A judge denied the petition to freeze the tribe’s financial assets, but ordered the tribe to allow the complainants to look at the group’s financial records.