Auckland founded as the capital

The Tāmaki isthmus, between the Waitematā and Manukau harbours, had been fought over for centuries. Between 1740 and 1750 Ngāti Whātua moved south from Kaipara and took it from Wai-o-Hua, then secured their hold by marrying into the defeated people. Their grip loosened in the 1820s, when Ngāpuhi under Hongi Hika came south armed with muskets. Āpihai Te Kawau, the leading chief of Ngāti Whātua in Tāmaki, took his people into exile after a heavy defeat at Te Ika-a-ranganui. When the French explorer Dumont d'Urville visited in 1827 he was surprised to find the fertile isthmus empty. Ngāti Whātua began cautiously returning to the Manukau about 1836, and Te Ara notes that Te Kawau's fear of Ngāpuhi was one reason he later invited the British Governor to settle among them.

William Hobson's first seat of government was at Okiato in the Bay of Islands, near Kororāreka, and he named the new capital Russell. From the start Hobson had an eye on the Waitematā. He sailed there on 21 February 1840 to survey it as a possible capital, but suffered a stroke on 1 March and was taken back north. Ngāti Whātua, meanwhile, were making their own approach. The Waitangi Tribunal's account has Te Kawau and six other chiefs travelling to the Bay of Islands in February 1840 to invite Hobson to live with them. Te Kawau signed the treaty at the Manukau on 20 March 1840. Shortly afterwards, the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography says, a large meeting at Kohimarama reached a decision only after the tohunga (priestly expert) Tītai uttered a prophecy, taken to mean that a seat of government on the Waitematā would ensure the tribe's survival, and his nephew Te Rewēti carried the invitation north.

Hobson was drawn by the fertile soil, the waterways and the large Māori population nearby. On 18 September 1840 the British flag was raised over the new town, which Hobson named after his patron Lord Auckland; the Tribunal's account puts the flagstaff at what is now the top of Queen Street. A deed signed on 20 October transferred about 3,000 acres. Te Ara's biography of Te Kawau says he and three other leaders received £50 and a quantity of blankets, clothing and goods, and its Ngāti Whātua entry values the whole payment at £341. Ngāti Whātua have long described the transaction as a tuku (gift) that created a lasting relationship with the Crown, rather than a sale. The first 40 immigrants arrived from Australia in October, and in February 1841 the officials, their families and the government records moved down from the Bay of Islands.

The Crown did well out of the land. Six months after the purchase, 44 acres were auctioned for £24,275, and the rest was subdivided and sold for more than £72,000, mostly within two years. That money paid for the new town's roads, bridges and hospitals. As Auckland grew, Ngāti Whātua sold more land to the government and to private buyers, and by the early 1850s they held little more than the slopes above Ōrākei and some land at Māngere. Te Kawau secured title to the last 700 acres at Ōrākei in 1868, but over the next century that too was taken, part of it in 1886 for a fort on Bastion Point. In 1977–78 Joe Hawke led a 506-day occupation of Bastion Point, and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei settled their historical treaty claims with the Crown in 2011. Auckland stayed the capital until 1865, when the seat of government moved to Wellington.