Generally speaking, they don't trust them. The issue is that Elves are slow to decide and place little value on material wealth. Elves tend to rely a lot on one another, living very cimmunally, which is, essentially, the opposite of the Dwarves.
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A thief looking for work, due to the symbol that Gandalf scratched on his front door.
A professional burglar looking for work. It was obvious as the runes of the secret sign indicating this was scratched on his front door (Gandalf had done this without Bilbo's knowledge).
If you are referring to the book "The Hobbit," we aren't told exactly. We do know that elves and dwarves had a long-standing grudge against each other. But it does seem as if the elves were trying to trap them, or at least to create an excuse for taking them prisoner. The elves in "The Hobbit" were more like the elves in Celtic folklore - silly, tricky, deceitful little fairies - than the regal, mysterious elves in "The Lord of the Rings." Legolas was a Mirkwood elf, one of the people that the dwarves encountered in "The Hobbit," and was not considered the equal of the Lorien elves.
They took them to the halls of the Elven King in his hall, a large cave at the edge of Mirkwood. The wood elves of Mirkwood, in the Hobbit, took the thirteen dwarves to their king's halls, where they were locked in by cellars and a magic gate.
The elves in "The Hobbit" did not know how the dwarves could have travelled there. They thought the barrels were all empty.
It was the Battle of Five Armies. The armies were the humans, elves and dwarves against the wargs and the goblins.
{| |- | In Chapter 9 of The Hobbit, the dwarves were captured by the elves. They had just escaped from the spiders in the previous chapter and were wandering around the forest. They were hungry and looking for food when they encountered the elves' feasting in the woods. After several failed attempts to 'crash the party' they were all captured, except Bilbo, who used his ring to escape. |}