On my Yellow Dog Linux/PPC system, any XTerm, regardless of whether it be local or remote, displays a garbled font. When I change the font using the -fn option, XTerm displays a different garbled font. I have had no trouble running any other applications on this computer's X server, nor have I had any problems using the XTerm on this computer from any other X server. This problem seems to be independent of the desktop environment or window manager I use.
After hours of Google searches, I found that I had the wrong driver selected in my XF86Config file. I still don't know why the problem was this specific, though.