MASHPEE, Mass. – The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, whose ancestors greeted the Pilgrims to the Atlantic shores, was given preliminary approval of the federal recognition it had been seeking for three decades, according to the tribe and a Massachusetts congressman’s spokesman.

The ruling from the Bureau of Indian Affairs was announced Friday, said tribe spokeswoman Paula Peters and Steve Broderick, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.

The ruling is a preliminary one and would put the tribe’s status on probation for a year until it would be final.

The federal decision caps a sometimes bitter struggle for the 1,468-member Cape Cod tribe that stretches back to 1975.

In hopes of speeding up its quest for federal recognition, the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe sued the U.S. Department of Interior in 2001. The government agreed to give its preliminary ruling by the end of March 2006.

Considerable power comes with federal recognition, which would make the tribe a sovereign entity within a town that would share its name but have little authority over it.