Emacs and backspace - again

[Rodger Castle]

I am aware that the 'Emacs backspace takes me to help' question has been delt with ad-nauseum on other lists and pages, but I can't seem to get any of the suggested fixes to work.

As in http://freebsd.active-venture.com/developers-handbook/emacs.html I added the following line to my ~/.emacs file:

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

In fact, it's the only line in my ~/.emacs

Am I missing something?

I'm using emacs20 from the ports collection (as emacs from ports would not compile due to the Xau3d compile error) on 5.4-PRERELEASE.
$TERM is xterm

Rodger