Screwed up keyboard mappings on RedHat

[Roy Smith <roy@panix.com>]

I'm using GNU Emacs 21.2.1 on a RedHat 8.0 box.  Neither my delete nor 
C-H key are working right.  C-H is acting like the delete key should.  
When I type "M-X help return c C-H", I get:

DEL runs the command backward-delete-char-untabify

Obviously something is mapping the C-H I typed into DEL.  I know it's 
not happening in some terminal emulation or transport layer before emacs 
gets hold of it.  If I trace the emacs process, I see it reading the 
right characters from stdin:

[roy@bonkers roy]$ grep '^read(0' typescript 
read(0, "\10", 1)                       = 1
read(0, "\10", 1)                       = 1
read(0, "\33x", 2)                      = 2
read(0, "h", 1)                         = 1
read(0, "e", 1)                         = 1
read(0, "l", 1)                         = 1
read(0, "p", 1)                         = 1
read(0, "\r", 1)                        = 1
read(0, "c", 1)                         = 1
read(0, "\10", 1)                       = 1
read(0, "\30", 1)                       = 1
read(0, "\3", 1)                        = 1

Two questions:

1) Where is this bogus mapping being done?

2) Why did RedHat screw this up?