MASHPEE, Mass. – 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 the Cape Cod group 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 anticipation of a Bureau of Indian Affairs phone call to tribal council chairman Glenn Marshall at 5:10 p.m.

“At one point, I nearly blacked out waiting for Glenn to tell us because I was holding my breath,” vice chairman Shawn Hendricks said. “It was just an unbelievable feeling, a relief to know we finally got this.

“I thought of the elders who weren’t there,” added the 39-year-old Hendricks. “I was around a lot of the elders that worked on the federal petition when I was young. It was an honor to know I was part of finishing their dream.”

About 400 of the tribe’s approximately 1,500 members heard the good news in person in a heated tent erected for a celebration near a stand of trees on tribal land. As they waited for the call, members played ceremonial drums.

Within minutes of getting the long-awaited news, the members received congratulatory calls from Gov. Deval Patrick, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. William Delahunt, who represents them in Congress.

In a statement, Kennedy said, “The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe has been extremely patient, waiting over three decades for this moment, and I congratulate them on their federal recognition. I’m pleased that the tribe will now have access to a range of essential federal services including education, social services, housing and health benefits.”

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, as it had in an unsuccessful lawsuit in the 1970s.

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

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 Legislature has not voted on any casino gambling proposals in recent years. But last April, the House overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would have allowed slot machines at the state’s horse and dog racing tracks.

The Mashpee are the second Massachusetts tribe to receive federal recognition after the Wampanoag of Gay Head-Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard. There are more than 560 recognized tribes in the U.S.

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 Cape Cod.

In its land reclamation lawsuit, pursued 1976 to 1982, the Mashpee Wampanoag claimed that land in Mashpee and three neighboring towns had been illegally taken from the tribe.

The tribe formally notified the government of its plans to seek recognition in 1975, but didn’t petition until 1990. That was rejected, and the tribe refiled in 1996. No action was taken on it for years, and the tribe sued the Department of Interior in 2001 to speed the review. The government agreed in 2005 to give its preliminary ruling last year.

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.