growdude, I think that contacting a native American society is a good move with the following caveats:
1) make sure you are dealing with descendants of tribes that would have been in the area when the markings are likely to have been made (i.e. when the markings would have been approximately the height that you could comfortably make them yourself). Native Americans are not and never have been a homogenous group. Just because someone is "full-blooded" Cherokee, doesn't mean he or she is going to understand the meaning of signs and symbols used by the Hopi or the Blackfeet. For that matter, the meaning of a lot of signs and symbols has been lost over the last 100-150+ years within the same tribe (and meanings are frequently made up just to get the questioner to go away)
2) the "Spanish" Helmet, the morion and/or the cabassett, were used by most European countries during the same time that the Spanish were using them.....so the presence of that type of helmet does not automatically mean the presences of Spaniards. (Although if it is a helmet and knot something else like a battle-axe, then it at least refers to Europeans).
3) If your arborist is correct, then that potentially puts the carving into the period that Europeans wore that type of helmet. However, if the sources everyone else cite are correct and the maximum age is 300 years, the tree is too young to represent something viewed at the time of the carving----But that does not preclude an "old" man from carving the images as a record of things he had witness as a youth (or even of a person recording something they had heard from their father or grandfather).
4) If the tree is in Alabama, extreme west Georgia, or Florida the possibility of it's representing what you hope it represents increases as Alabama and Georgia contain known Gold producing areas and the panhandles of both Alabama and Georgia was included in the territory claimed and "administered" by the Spanish at the time.
Good luck.
BA
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