keymap problem

[no spam]

I've been given an account on a university system running Linux, and the 
    Emacs version is 21.2.1.   The problem is, I cannot figure out how 
to make my Backspace key work properly.  Or rather, I can, sort of, but 
only by typing global-set-key each time.

Before you say "so put that in your .emacs file, and off you go" -- I've 
been trying to do that, but can't make it work.

Details:

I'm running Fedora Core 3 and using ssh to get to the host.

if I do M-x global-set-key while in Emacs, when I hit Backspace, it 
displays it as C-d (First clue something isn't right).  How do I change 
this binding, so that my Backspace is really mapped to a backspace, and 
not C-d?

If I give it the function 'delete-backward-char', then Backspace AND C-d 
do the same thing, which is a slight improvement, but not really what I 
want.


and putting

(global-set-key [backspace] 'delete-backward-char)

or

(global-set-key [DEL] 'delete-backward-char)

in the .emacs file doesn't work:  Backspace still deletes forward.


Moreover, C-h on this system is currently the way to get backspace 
functionality, not "help" as it should be.

So how do I fix all this?  I've been poring over the Gnu emacs website 
and I know it has something to do with the keymaps, but I haven't quite 
managed to figure it out.  Thanks