newbie xterm help to make emacs life easier

I'm trying to use xterm from my NetBSD laptop into a more powerful NetBSD
server.  (Yes, I know I should get an X client running on the remote machine
but I don't do that yet.)

Anyway, I'd like the laptop's "Backspace" key to send delete, and I'd like
the laptop's ALT key to be mapped to "meta-" for emacs.

Currently, Backspace sends Control-H and Alt doesn't seem to do anything.

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Aside, "man xterm" seems pretty daunting.  It talks about an X toolkit
option, but "man -k toolkit" doesn't produce results.  Also, there is some
talk in that man page about "resources" but doesn't give any examples on
how to specify those resources.

Thanks!  -Mike