XEmacs 21 /vs./ my keyboard: I want my DEL back

I rebind my keyboard under X to swap two pairs of keys, `~ & ESC and BS & DEL. (This is of course because such placement is The Way God Intended Them To Be, where God was on an extended visit to DEC during the time that DEC was creating the VT100.) Normally, this is fine: XEmacs run as an X application correctly informs me via `C-h c' in the *scratch* buffer that "DEL runs the command backward-or-forward-delete-char"; when running Gnus and having entered a *Summary*, I learn that "B DEL runs the command gnus-summary-delete-article". When XEmacs is run in an xterm, however, I learn instead that "BS runs the command delete-backward-char" and "B BS is undefined". Worse, it knows that the key marked "Delete" is generating '\010', because it induces help functions just like typing an actual "Control H". I know the keyboard is sending the right characters (\177s generated using C-v): [1157] [14:10:37] beaver:~> od -c ^?^?^?^? 0000000 177 177 177 177 \n 0000005 It's not a BS, it's a DEL. There's an important difference between them, and I picked the specified meaning myself. What is giving XEmacs the idea that it should make some silly extra remapping just because I'm running it inside an xterm? XEmacs 21.2-b7, Linux RH5.1, assorted XFree 3.3.2.3 RPMs.